Short stories were my thing for quite a while. I’d read about Ray Bradbury’s weekly story challenge, and though that wasn’t realistic for me, I did write one every other week for a year (with Jill, as I mentioned in my last newsletter), and somewhere between three and 12 for years after that. Eventually, I built up a massive backlog of practice stories. I loved the process of crafting a story from start to finish in a very short amount of time; it helped me level up my skills quickly.
The end products varied, of course. Some were ridiculous. Some were crap. Some were serious gems that I enjoy returning to from time to time.
I’ve been picking through them over the past few years, and I’ve finally chosen the best thirty-something of the lot. I grouped them together thematically and paid my sister to copy-edit them for me, then got them some stunning series covers from Getcovers.
Now I’ve got these collections in my back pocket to give away and incentivize people to join my mailing list, or to sell directly to readers through my website. Exciting new author goals on the horizon!
(I also took the same concept as Bradbury to create my book SHORT STORY BOOT CAMP, which takes you through a 52-week series of exercises to master the elements of strong short stories—in case you’re interested in a framework for practicing the way I did!)
Have you written short stories? Hit reply and tell me about them!
So why should you care that I’m finally releasing my shorts?
Because, as a thank you for reading my newsletter, I’d like to offer you a free copy of the first volume of my short story collections, THE LIBRARY ATTIC COLLECTION PRESENTS: SPELLBREAKERS.
Five high school friends grapple with a demonic infiltrator. A weeks-long chess game pits a cruel pawn shop manager against his employees. Two wives protect their Midwest neighbors from the demonic power that emanates from their local classical radio station.
You’ll find these and other stories within!
If you read and enjoy SPELLBREAKERS, please leave a review on Goodreads. I will not be listing these collections on Amazon at this time.
The Free-zer
It’s another installment of THE FREE-ZER—the section where you’ll find something that will cost you zero monies. (That’s no dollars, cents, pounds, pesos, Republic credits, Monopoly money, latinum, or dubloons.)
I teamed up with Reign of Reads and three other authors to sweeten the pot for their giveaway of the box set of Douglas Adams’ infamous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Whether you win the Galaxy set or not, if you enter to win, you’ll get a free copy of DAUGMENT along with those three other sci-fi titles!
Snow Blood looks extremely epic, and like it’s the perfect companion to DAUGMENT.
Though you may have gotten your copy of SPELLBREAKERS from my BookFunnel link above, I was keen to get the collection into others’ hands, so I’ve added it to a FREE FANTASY collection for the coming month.
There are all kinds of fantasy and paranormal stories represented in that collection! No matter how your tastes skew within the genres, there’s a good chance you’ll find something you’ll enjoy amongst this giveaway’s free offerings.
All the best,
August
I write short stories too! My process takes longer than 2 weeks for sure though - mostly only getting flash fiction done in a period shorter than that. How much pre-planning do you do on a short story before you start writing it? Most of mine end up being 'pantsed', though I've been working a lot more on some sort of outlining before writing as I've found some of my earliest pantsed stories lack arc/depth.