From the LITTLE SPRINGS POST-RECORD: May 23, 1880
Tue   13 May 2008   23:07 by Kevin McGehee 0 comments [Fiction] Completed	The preceding August, some cowboys who’d had trouble in the West Fork country sold off their stock and pulled out. Apparently their involvement in the West Fork country wasn’t quite at an end. (This is for continuity’s sake, to make it plausible that descendants of some of these guys might be in Clearwater more than a century later.) » Read more "From the LITTLE SPRINGS POST-RECORD: May 23, 1880"

Dark Heart

Wed   13 Feb 2008   12:44 by Kevin McGehee 6 comments [Fiction] In Progress

An idea for a story can come to me in any number of ways. For this one, I thought about supernovas, and how it might be desirable in a future, spacefaring era, to be able to tell when one is going to go off. Well, how do you tell when one is about to go off? You have to study them to learn these kinds of things, right? And when you’re watching all the potential supernovas relatively close to human settlement, and you can’t learn anything more from them until one goes off and potentially causes trouble for people in the neighborhood, you might want to expand the number of stars you’re watching so you can gather more data and make your forecasts more accurate before they’re needed closer to home. And that’s where these folks come in. Still in progress. » Read more "Dark Heart"

The Reluctant I
Wed   26 Dec 2007   12:16 by Kevin McGehee 2 comments [Fiction] Completed	In this, the first of the exercises mentioned here, the challenge is to write a 600-word story from the first-person point of view, but severely limiting the use of the first-person pronoun. The “I” nevertheless has to be important to the story. This will indeed be a challenge. » Read more "The Reluctant I"

Inorganism

Fri   14 Sep 2007   15:45 by Kevin McGehee 0 comments [Fiction] In Progress

Having recently seen I, Robot, I’ve been inspired to write something based on what I see as a more likely evolution of existing technology—one in which robots as conceived by Asimov don’t quite exist. Advanced cyberservants are inevitable, but I see them more likely to be extensions of the persons they serve rather than as potentially distinct entities that just happen to be manufactured. The close integration between the organic source identity and the inorganic extended identity is what will blur the line between “created” life and its “manufactured” image. As far as I know, Asimov never really integrated the concept of nanotech into his robot stories, and though it played a role in the movie its full potential wasn’t explored. Certainly I’d rather my robots were linked to me than to the robots’ version of Microsoft. “Three Laws Safe” would work better that way, I think. » Read more "Inorganism"

Medicine Mountain

Sat   30 Jun 2007   11:10 by Kevin McGehee 0 comments [Fiction] In Progress

I’ve used this opening sequence in previous story attempts, but finally decided that having the story told from the point of view of a policeman who didn’t even know the victim well, wasn’t the way to go. The victim’s brother, however, was enough of a screw-up that it might make for a more interesting tale, and one in which I could take a freer hand with the ways and means. By the way, one of the 5 Hat cowboys mentioned in this piece was named Calhoun in the unsuccessful short story that inspired it. I suppose it’s possible he or one of his descendants returned after 1879. One of these days I should try that story again—only, you know, better. Update, August 26, 2007: I just dug up the hard copy of the original submission of the 5 Hat short story mentioned above; I might just be able to take a crack at telling this story again, in a way that people would actually want to read it. » Read more "Medicine Mountain"

Wash & Zoë‘s Wedding
Sun   26 Mar 2006   11:44 by Kevin McGehee 0 comments [Fiction] Completed	Prior to the release of Serenity, the studio-hosted Browncoats website hosted a number of contests, including one calling for fans’ versions of the vows said by Zoë and Wash when they were married. I couldn’t settle for merely writing vows—I had to write the whole scene. » Read more "Wash & Zoë‘s Wedding"

From the LITTLE SPRINGS POST-RECORD: August 3, 1879

Sat   17 Sep 2005   9:53 by Kevin McGehee 0 comments [Fiction] Completed

Years ago I wrote a story called “The Lynching of Lefty Pross” and submitted it to a magazine that was in the business of publishing Western-themed fiction. It was rejected. But some later stories I tried to write, including Medicine Mountain, have been built around the idea that the 5 Hat cowboys described in this old-style newspaper article, stayed in the West Fork country. Maybe I should have stopped trying to write those stories after I wrote this piece. » Read more "From the LITTLE SPRINGS POST-RECORD: August 3, 1879"

Just a Slob Like One of Us
Mon   25 Apr 2005   11:26 by Kevin McGehee 0 comments [Fiction] Completed	Just another post-modern “it sucks to be all-powerful” tale. » Read more "Just a Slob Like One of Us"

Have No Master
Mon   28 Mar 2005   12:03 by Kevin McGehee 0 comments [Fiction] Completed	The “noble wolf” is a predator, people! » Read more "Have No Master"

Hey, Diddle Diddle
Wed   23 Mar 2005   0:09 by Kevin McGehee 0 comments [Fiction] Completed	If David Gerrold had written a Western-themed story for “The Twilight Zone,“ it would undoubtedly have been a lot better than this. » Read more "Hey, Diddle Diddle"