No longer dependent on a Gatekeeper's approval.

Read the first two chapters of "Fateplay" at writer's group last night and--if I do say so myself--it was a hit. It sounded really good.

There were a few spots where previously I'd had a few hitches, and I'd rewritten them, and those improvements were very noticeable to me, if no one else. There was plenty of action, plenty of detail, plenty of character development.

It all worked really well.

Ironically, I think this story will work best with those who aren't immersed in the Larp and cosplay culture, or even in the nerd culture overall. The fanboys will probably find lots to pick apart. It's one of the reasons I've stayed away from SF (which this story more or less is). I need to get the technology right and I'm sort of winging that part of it.

I've changed the role-play terms of cosplay, Larping, creative anachronism, and re-enactors into an overall term of Hyper-reality. I'm purposely vague about how far into the future this is (twenty years?) and also not specific about the capabilities of holograms, virtual reality, and A.I. 

If I had my druthers, I'd call it science fantasy, as oxymoron as that description is. But I've always been fine with that mix.

Twenty and thirty years ago I was constantly writing stuff that had anachronisms in it and was constantly told I couldn't do that---it seemed to offend the fanboys and was confusing to the non-fanboys.

Now anachronisms aren't only accepted, they are a feature of much of current fantastical writing. I mean, what else is the Steampunk genre but a big cauldron of anachronisms?

So I'm sort of doing a little bit of a stretch of that, if you will. I'm not letting the mainstream SF thought process dissuade me that way I did years ago.

For instance, I also wondered back then why no one was writing SF or Fantasy Romance. Was told, no one would want to read that. The SF and Fantasy people would reject the Romance, the Romance readers would reject the SF and Fantasy.

So....that would be news to the millions of Paranormal readers. HEH.

Another term for this story would be metaphysical science-fiction, which is probably an anathema to most SF readers. Oh, well.

I'm not going to try to explain the science of it; I'm feeling my way with alternative worlds and quantum physics, with my dim understanding of the overall thrust, if not the specific scientific and mathematical models. 

My instincts were right 30 years ago, but I didn't have the confidence to follow through. (Though if I had, I probably would have been too soon.) This time I'm not letting anything stop me from writing what I want, especially since I'm no longer dependent on a Gatekeepers approval.