Yep, that's pretty much what happened. Two days ago I was riding home on the Hudson Light Rail, and while I was staring out over at the river and the skyline of Manhattan, an entire story dropped into my head. This rarely happens - in fact, this is the only the second time it's occurred. I sat on it for 24 hours, just to see if it held up in my head - it did, and I couldn't stop thinking about it, so yesterday I wrote the first 1000 words with a rather astonishing ease. Ah, if only all my stories dropped from the sky into my brain like manna from heaven! :P

My goal is to try to finish it this weekend, then set it aside for a week while I finish up the story/first chapter I started last week. I'm hoping to have both stories polished and out the door before I leave for Belgium next month - the story/first chapter ("Discrimen") probably to fishnetmag.com, and this new story, which is called "When We Get On the Inside", to Interzone for their "Mundane Science Fiction" issue. The story is more social science fiction than hard science, though, so I don't know if it'll make the cut. It's also what I could call my first feminist story - although it's also very damning of certain aspects of the "culture" of women at the same time. It's hard to explain. It's very Tiptreean? I have no idea. Clearly I should leave the labeling to editors and critics.

FYI, the photo of the diorama really has nothing to do with this post. I'm just dressing things up a bit. If you want to see more dioramas, and photos from the collections of the Museum of Natural History (dinosaurs! Aztec gods! flying cephalopods!) click on the photo and it'll take you to the set on Flickr.