I am astounded.
Today, I found a novelette I completely forgot existed. It's probably a full 200 novel pages long by estimate, and took maybe three months of my life to write. And I forgot it existed.
How it happened: today I was listening half-attentively to Power Rangers on TV, thinking about MacGuffins (this triggered by Power Rangers, no less), and about how stories about those are so common. Then because I've been thinking about the Hunger Games so much, I wondered what would happen if the plot had gone a different way--if the game had been about finding a small object in a vast place and fighting for it, instead.
At that point, a bell rang, like I'd heard that plot somewhere before.
Then I realised that I'd written that plot before. And four months before Hunger Games was published--so I probably didn't get the idea from there, or from any ambient discussions regarding that.
In fact, no, I remember where the idea came from. It was from Oban Star-Racers.
The novel is about a girl named Maisha (oh GOODNESS) from a broken family of gardeners. She enters a tournament of six nations, where the prize is anything you want (now why are the bells ringing?), and consists of an elimination round as described above (finding an object) that narrows the competition pool from a thousand to sixty-four. Then they go fighting one-on-one, and more often than not, murder is victory.
I just thought the idea of competition at the heart of a story was nice, no, awesome. Triggered by the wonderful-ness of OSR, no less.
The Prize of the Sword, the title I gave it. I see why I can't remember it. Oh goodness.
I think another part of the reason it slipped from my memory is that I never let anyone read it. Trash stuff.
I think it needs a new title. Badly.
