I have entered a short story into Indiehorror.org’s Cannibal Cookoff short story contest. My entry is called “Control Group.” I’d incourage you to visit the forums here to read all of the entries. You have to join to vote, and you can vote for three. I’m not a big rah-rah kind of guy when it comes to this, vote for the best ones. That’s how it works.
That being said, this is a synchronicities post, and two of them happened in writing this post. I got a direct tweet which probably a few hundred people got asking for a submission to this, and the rules said the story had to be written after Jan. 22nd (I think, mine was actually written this week after grinding on the initial idea for a week). So I came up with this idea about lab-grown meat, and the next day, on one of my regular news sites, there was an article about how one man was working on lab-grown meat as a food alternative, and how he went about it. I thought great, the universe is helping me out again.
Let me explain what I mean by that. This isn’t like when I wrote about the University of Illinois Chicago linguistics professor who transplanted a group of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their Mayan dialect, and then a month later found out about a real life University of Illinois Chicago linguistics professor who transplanted a group of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their Mayan dialect. This was more like when I was in college, writing my senior thesis novel about a group of men made immortal by Anunnaki in ancient times, and during the break before I began writing it, a copy of Archeology Magazine arrived at my house, addressed to me, with a relief carving of an Anunnaki photographed on the cover. I didn’t have a subscription, never asked for a free trial, and another issue never arrived. That’s what I mean. The world provided me with research material, poked the story on.
During the writing, I used a number of articles I’d read in the past to guide the conversation in the story, and mentioned the creation of skin in the lab. I didn’t have anything to go by. The day after I wrote that, an article on making skin in that lab came up on Fark.
I know. Strange. Go visit the contest. Vote. Maybe for me if you like it.
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