dr_pretentious | My Shtick Versus Not My Shtick, or The Black Head of Atho

Well, I prodded at the idea of writing a paranormal romance, mostly because I think it would be fun to work with

alg, and because it's rare to know with any great degree of detail what an editor you admire is looking for. But the more I tried to work myself up about the idea, the more my other projects took off. Any minute now, I'll make peace with the fact that the romance genre is just not my shtick, sort of the way basketball or bungee jumping will never be my shtick. It would have been nice, though, to produce something the market favors.

The estate sale story got much weirder today than I expected it would. Bob discovered that his mother had been hiding the Black Head of Atho in her shoe closet. No, not the Blackhead of Atho, the Black Head of Atho. Why does the Black Head of Atho appear in my short story? I don't know yet. I'm pretty sure Bob's father stole it, but his motive is not yet clear.

If you had asked me this morning, "Hey, Sarah, what's the Black Head of Atho?" I would have said, "Why, it's a famous lost occult artifact, of course. You've heard of it. Just think a minute." And I'd have been wrong, because there's very nearly nothing about it on the web. Nope, not famous. Which is good and bad. Good because I can do anything I want with my new McGuffin, and who will care? The five other people who remember that page from Doreen Valiente. And bad because only those five people who object will be a position to know exactly how funny it is that the Black Head of Atho turns up in the shoe closet of the late Amelia Baines.

It's not that big a loss. Whatever purpose the story wants the Head to serve, it will serve. Besides, there's just something inherently amusing about an artifact called the Black Head of Atho. I could say that name all day. What portentous phonemes! And yet the first thing anyone thinks of who hears it said aloud is inevitably, "Have you consulted a dermatologist about that?"