Skin Deep Havana was a fun story both to write and to research.<\/p>\n
I based it off a bunch of research and the story outline I did for an anthology I chose not to write for. Raconteur was doing a fun little supernatural spy anthology that I wanted to contribute to. So I did a LOT of research on 1956 Cuba. November. The real life day of an attempted Communist uprising that was stopped. Did lots and lots of research. Was looking forward to it. Then Raconteur changed the style of the anthology to be dark horror style supernatural spy anthology and I lost all interest in writing that story. I tried. But I just couldn’t do it.<\/p>\n
So when I was looking for inspiration for a story about Selkies that I wanted to write, I thought about that abandoned concept of Havana. It’s on the ocean. I could really easily swap out the original McGuffin for the Selkie and then cool things up with the Selkie having a more active role than the original McGuffin did. The Selkie affinity for the sea I decided I could really use in the climax. I know I pushed things a bit beyond what most folklore says they can do, but my Captain William Carter stories have always played with the folklore a bit. And I worked to the keep Selkie mostly true to their style and known abilities. I just nibbled around the edges and then used those edges to really boost a fun climax.<\/p>\n
In the end, I think I managed a good pivot on the story. I kept the light hearted fun style I was going for and wanted to write in the first place, and I just made certain to move the climax to a beach so the Selkie could stand in the surf and be as powerful as she will ever be.Tweaked the climax. Totally removed one character and used that absence to give the Selkie time to shine and show off.<\/p>\n
It was a very fun exercise into completely changing a story around but using the original base idea as a stepping stone to the final made it something that itched multiple noses at the same time. So I’m glad I was able to finish it. It felt good to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Skin Deep Havana was a fun story both to write and to research. I based it off a bunch of research and the story outline I did for an anthology I chose not to write for. Raconteur was doing a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diaries","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-medron-pryde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15041,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15040\/revisions\/15041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}