Short Stories Abound

Hello everyone! I trust this update finds you all well. I wanted to take a moment to share some more exciting news with you. Earlier this month I wrote a 300-word short story called Exposed for consideration in the Horror Writer’s Association‘s open submission for Mental Health Awareness month in an anthology they call, Of Horror and Hope. The guidelines for submission were to write a story that was no more than 300 words, so I just made that, and was about struggles with mental health, writing and horror. I am happy to report that they liked it and it will be included in their June campaign of blog posts as well as an eBook available for free at the end of June!

Once that is live, I will be sure to post a link to it so you can read it. In other news, my short story anthology is moving along very nicely. I got some fantastic beta reader feedback on one of my stories about time. My friend Michael DeCicco and I came up with the story ideas for this trilogy of time and this one, called Downtime, always felt like the weakest of the three. Thanks to that excellent feedback, I see now why it was the weakest. The main character has no dimension. You see, in all my other stories I always take the time to sketch a character out. I define their age, height, physical attributes, role in the story, external vs internal struggles, their backstory, etc. Mike and I never did that for this story, so in the end you really don’t care about the character, which is a problem because then you don’t connect to the story.

That feedback was a revelation, so I went back and created the protagonist and took the habits and personality of that character in consideration while editing and it has led to some better word choices, which now evoke different emotions, which I feel will connect readers more so when the story is over, not only is the character’s life impacted more noticeably, but you the reader are impacted as well. That is the last story to be edited and then it’s submitted in full to the publisher. I say in full because I shared my progress with the publisher last week, so they can see where I am at and what I have on offer for this anthology. They loved my one story, An Acrimonious Descent, which is the longest in the collection. That story was the sole reason they wanted to work with me, so I am really hoping they like the other stories just as much or more. The anthology is going to be either twelve or thirteen stories ranging from Twilight Zone style science fiction to horror. I am so excited to get this collection published and out in the world, so I will also keep you up to date on its progress.

That is all for this post. As always, I want to thank you for taking the time to read this and for your support. Be sure to make some you-time and I hope you have a great rest of the day.