From Above

AFTERWORD

My editor recently described this story as noir. My immediate internal reaction was, “What?! No! I hate noir!” Having reread the story, I see that he’s right. While sci-fi noir is not something I would consciously write, it seems a part of me appreciates the genre. My only memory of actually writing this story is being in between novels, having a few hours to spare and sitting down in front of laptop.

As an artist, I often sit down with a blank piece of paper and just start drawing. I don’t know what I’m going to draw. I just start putting lines on the page and something emerges. It’s not some kind of metaphysical experience, I just see something in the shape and expand upon it. I play the same game with my family while waiting for food in the restaurant. Someone scribbles some quick lines and I turn it into a drawing. The creation of FROM ABOVE was similar. I sat down and started dreaming up good first lines. After a few minutes I typed, “When my arm came off, I knew something wasn’t right.”

I built the rest of the story around that line, first explaining how it had happened and then asking and answering the follow-up questions that explanation created. The story emerged on its own, and I suspect the noir feeling of it comes from it being written that way. I was asking and answering questions like a detective and that voice crept into my writing.

The end result is an experimental story that turned into my first magazine published piece and made me a whopping fifty bucks.