Over the weekend I submitted my
story The Cat Eater to a magazine. Besides
my crit group wncmysterians.org and several close friends, the story hadn't
seen much daylight. I’ve been holding it back because I want to release an
ebook of my short pieces. At the same time though, I want to get
some magazine publication. Submission means waiting months for their
positive/negative response, but that’s life, ain’t it?
I'm not sure where the idea for the
story originally came from. Mostly, I think it came because I was stuck on my
larger novel projects and was looking for a shorter story I could knock out
quickly in the meantime. Did I say "quickly?" I must be kidding. Even
the shortest project becomes an involved research quest and an attenuated
writing effort of several weeks. It was the same with The Cat Eater.
The research started with a Google
search for "cat recipes." I was surprised when hundreds of hits
showed up, and I was able to get some very cool stuff. Some of it was satirical
but much of it was real, including the info on cultures around the world that
relied at least partly on feline protein.
The title of the piece was a major
problem. I went through The Cat Burglar, The Cat Bungler, and Cooking Cats.
In the end, I settled on The Cat Eater, a title that some people
find so unsettling that they refuse to read the story. I feel bad about their
refusal, because I think that the story shows some excellent writing and has
twists and turns that make it thoroughly macabre. My critique group agrees. By
the way, one of the refusing readers is in that group.
Another little known fact, is that
my cat, The Half Montie (a fixed ex-male), hasn't read it either. I don't want
to upset him.