The Count is the Kingdom

Chrysina optima. Gold variant. 

Image courtesy of the Generic Guide to New Word Beetles

My story, The Count is the Kingdom is up at Electric Spec. This quarterly eZine has been publishing for six years, which is like forever on the Internet. If you want to know more about them, you can read their interview with the W1S1 people here.

I can tell you it was a real pleasure working with David Hughes the co-founder at Electric Spec, who edited this story and really helped  make it shine! If you want to know more about the inner workings of a successful online publication check out their blog, where the editors keep readers and writers apprised of what they're up to.

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The Count is the Kingdom is the kind of story where a lot of dispirate ideas came together as I worked on it. I remember starting out with the image of a walled city that was actually a honeypot trap, collecting more and more people. To what purpose I had no idea, at least I didn't when I started writing. The first draft was actually a failed flash piece, so I started playing with some more ideas.

15th century Catalan mappamundi

I got to thinking about cartography and map making, and about how early explorers imagined the world. I had the thought that a census is a kind of topography of numbers that draws a map of a different kind inside our heads.

I can't remember what got me onto beetles, besides the fact that I'm raising a pair of tomboys and bugs are a constant topic of conversation. Ninety percent of the time a bug that wanders into our house is the subject of rescue not squashing. I spent a couple enjoyable hours researching scarabs and beetles while writing this story, especially how they figure in mythology. 

I hope you enjoy reading it, I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.