I’ve made my list, and I’ve checked it twice, and it’s time for more free fiction.

As my special Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yule/Anything-but-that-hideous-PC-drek-”Holiday” gift to you, I’m pleased to bring you “Manifest Hegemony”, a little gem of dark fiction concerning something very appropriate for this time of the year: ice, and lots of it.

Of course, that ice is millions of miles from Earth, and you won’t exactly find elves at this North Pole, but my point stands: it’s still a delightfully chilling piece of fiction for you to crunch your literary boots on.

Take care of yourselves out there. Give to charity early and often, and warm up by the fire. I’ll see you on the other side of darkness.

Merry Christmas.

This is proof positive that J.K. Rowling’s work created a phenomenon that we’ll probably never see again in our life time. Not bad for a woman that wrote most of the first “Potter” book during her daily rail commute.

But if the end result of all this is that more kids everywhere are reading, and more are connecting with their parents over the material, then you won’t be hearing me complain.

By the way — work steadily progresses on the final of the last three tales I’m writing this year.

So scratch another draft. Two down, one to go. See? I told you I could do this.

I suppose everyone has bad streaks. I need somewhere to vent, so it might as well be cyperspace that hears my lamentations.

Right now I am besieged by frustration from two stories I’ve dubbed “the evil twins”. The two tales — one in the third-draft phase, the other in the first-draft phase — have several things in common:

• They are both horror stories.
• Both have novel concepts.
• Both are tightly protagonist-based.
• Both are frustrating the hell out of me.

I have been plagued by how to end these two stories. In both cases, I had the two stories outlined well in advance of writing them. However, despite flying well, I can’t seem to stick their landings. And it’s sapping my enthusiasm.

Worse still, this had bled-over into my ability to work on a third science fiction piece that I should be salivating over. The problem is, I’m negatively associating my frustration over tales one and two with this third effort.

I don’t know how to get my enthusiasm back. Long hours at work and the demands of the Christmas Season have sapped my time and led me to crave relaxation to the point of slacking off even during my normal writing times. Instead of writing during lunch, I’ve been browsing the web. I’ve been lucky to get north of 500 words a day lately, and some days I haven’t done any.

I remained determined. I have to kick myself in the butt and get in gear. I have self-imposed a deadline to get all three tales out before the year is over. That means I have to correct the first story, finish off the second and move it through the normal draft and first reader cycle — then do all the same with number three.

All over three weeks.

Think I can do it? I promise. I expect you guys to hold me to it.