I’ve been hammering away at various and sundry writing projects, with plenty of irons in the fire for a change. While chatting with Deb on the phone earlier, she heard what I had going and asked about fiction.The answer caught me by surprise.While I have some fiction irons in the theoretical fire, I have nothing right now. Unless you count Matt Daemon’s adventures in The Weekly World News but those are really short, shorts and highly formulaic. (Side note: the first two Daemons are now in print. Anyone check them out yet?)I do miss the fiction. Much of the fiction I’ve written the last few years has been short stuff such as the Star Trek short stories. When I start my next big fiction project, it’ll be like stretching some really unused muscles. The requirements of a novel are very different than a short story and you train yourself to work with an economy of words and space. In theory, the next long piece will be a media tie-in collaboration so at least I’ll have someone to help ease me back into the process.Yeah, I know, I should be devoting some time to the original urban fantasy outline so it can go to market. Once I finish writing about careers in Artificial Intelligence. Honest.