…not that it means I’m writing in the main Timelines track, more like I’m writing a sort-of sequel to The Cross-Time Kamaitachi.
It started as a short story that was intended as a submission for an anthology that’s being kicked around by people I know. It very quickly went past 6,000 words and is now north of 20,000. So — probably a novel, though I might be able to rework part of it into a short story for the anthology yet. (Sorry, the anthology isn’t official, so far it’s just an idea being kicked around as noted, so I can’t really say much about it.)
What happens when enough people believe strongly in an almost-entirely mythical person, she actually comes to life among them as an ordinary citizen of their town? Despite the “myth” being an entirely-fictional depiction of a (probably) real person, whose life and actions are celebrated every year by a festival held in the town?
If you’re Horiuchi Tsurue, a plain, meek, unassuming Japanese woman from Ōmishima Island in Ehime Prefecture, in the post-Plague Japan of the year 2215, you hide in your work and never make any waves. Even though you’ve “lived” for 250 years since the novelist wrote his book about you. And even though you know you can’t leave the island, or you’ll fade away and die. But you’ve lived so long that way, you don’t really remember the why of any of it…so you just work, and “yesterday, today, tomorrow” is the whole of your world. You have no friends. You have no boyfriend or husband. You just have your shop and your work…and the odd stack of manga you’ve managed to collect over the years, to read at night.
But one rainy day in July, a certain warrior woman and her sidekick daughter show up to donate their weapons to the local shrine…and nothing is really the same after that.
Like I say — working on it. The working title is The Tale of the Crane Princess (鶴姫物語) — and you can probably figure out who Tsurue’s character is loosely based upon if you search that 🙂 Though for what it’s worth, the movie of that name is even more BS than the original Japanese novel that came out in 1965 and prompted the legend to begin with.