Hole in the Wall

  • Title: Hole in the Wall
  • Genre: Science Fiction
  • Length: 2692
  • Written: January 2006
  • Published: Atomjack #1, May 2006


    • Excerpt:
    It was just an ordinary Sunday evening when I sat down at the computer to study stock charts and prepare stop loss orders for the next morning. As I reviewed a particularly lack-luster chart, I couldn’t help but be distracted by a little hole in the wall above my printer. The hole was quite small, but it certainly was disturbing because it wasn’t there yesterday.

    At first, I didn’t think much of it. Little hole. Kids hadn’t been in the room, and if they had, they’d have left a much bigger hole. Kids are like that. They don’t do any damage small. I decided that the hole was the result of a nail hanging a picture from days gone by, and I just had never noticed it before.



    Discussion
    My first sale in two years. A minor and untried market, but it felt good particularly since I had the lead position in the launch issue. Not bad.

    The story started as boiler pot--that is, something to write to keep myself writing. I sat at my computer and looked up at the wall and really did notice a black spot. Wasn't a hole, but it inspired the story.

    This story meshed pretty much my real life with the absurd idea of a two-dimensional black hole. I got the idea of using myself as the point of view character from David Gerrold, who does that a lot. There are advantages and disadvantage. For one thing, the character is fully developed and you pretty much know what you'd do in any given situation. On the other hand, it's hard not to disclose things you don't want the world to know, or even to be honest about things you don't want the world to know, but write about them anyway.

    I wrote several other stories using myself as the POV character, most notably, my Didier Forneau stories.



    (c) 2005-2007 by Rick Novy

    Last update: 25 March 2007