Tag Archives: short stories

Random Rambling About (My) Short Stories…

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I am in the editing stage of a book of short stories.  This will be different from my other two books of short fiction in a number of ways.  The other two were both pretty eclectic, while this is all science fiction.  Seasons of Imagination had 36 stories and totaled about 71K words.  Embers had 22 stories and totaled about 90K words.  This book will only have 11 stories and be close to 75K words, so the average story length, having jumped for Embers, has jumped again.

I like short stories.  I like to read them, and I like to write them.  Although I like the novels and longer novellas I put out, I think my short stories (and short novellas) as given in these three collections are my best works of fiction.  I know this format is not the best if trying to sell books, but…  Both Seasons of Imagination and Embers have sold better than The Old Mill or The Haley Branch and much, much better than my two fantasy novellas, so…  They also each have almost as many reviews (or at least stars) as those three put together.

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Get If for Free! Embers on Kindle

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As I said yesterday, I am doing a promotion on my book of short stories, Embers. For the next 5 days, the Kindle version will be free! That is October 2 through October 6. Get a copy today while it is free! (And leave a review 😉).

Embers is my second book of short stories.  There are two novellas, plus two more stories that are almost novella length.  Even though there are a few very short stories, the average length of story is more than double those in Seasons of Imagination.

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Meeting at that corner of time where day and night become one, where dreams and reality mix, let’s stir the coals of that fire called ‘imagination’ to discover an eclectic mix of short stories.  Each story is a bit of frozen flame, an ember, that can flare up in your mind.

These embers form a collection of “tales that cover a wide range of genres, moods, and characters, from heartbreaking and heartwarming trials of love and family to thought-provoking journeys into the future. Most importantly, the stories are peopled with richly-drawn characters gifted with unique voices, emotional depth, and the power to capture the imagination. They’re stories that will stick.” – Author D. Wallace Peach

So whether you only have time to warm yourself with a very short work of flash, or you want to get cozy and lost in a novella, there is a story, an ember, in here for you.

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Some posts about Embers:

Cover Reveal – Embers
Embers – The Blurb
More on Embers – Short Stories
Embers – Kindle Preorder
The Foreword
The Release!

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You can get Embers – Short Stories here:

Kindle
US
UK
FR
CA
AU

Paperback
US
UK
FR

If you live somewhere else, you can try searching on your local Amazon.

Coming Up – Free Embers…

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Yeah, odd title for a post 😉😁 Anyway, this is just a heads up that I will be giving away the Kindle version of my book of short stories starting tomorrow, Friday October 2, 2020 (I think it starts midnight, Pacific Time).

Want to know more about the book? Here is a link to the Embers Page. (I’ll also post more tomorrow)

And here are some links if you read this after midnight PST on the second, or if you want to pay for a paperback version:

Kindle
US
UK
FR
CA
AU

Paperback
US
UK
FR

If you live somewhere else, you can try searching on your local Amazon.

Embers (Again ;) )

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Embers

It seems that poor Embers got lost along the way and has picked up about zero interest.  A lot of the stories are based on stories that I posted on the blog, but remember, I post first drafts here and by the time they make it to the book they’ve undergone massive revision.

Embers is my second book of short stories.  There are over twenty stories in Embers, of which two are novellas and two others are almost novella length.  Even though there are a few very short stories, the average length of story is more than double those in the first book, Seasons of Imagination.

*** Continue reading →

The Foreword – Embers

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Back in early 2017 I wrote a short story to one of Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompts called “Embers”.  I later added four more parts to the story, posting each on line as it was completed.  No, not my first serial story nor my last.  In fact, I have written two 25,000 word novellas based solely on Sue’s prompts and am in the middle of a novel that is mostly based on them.  When I finished the story, I immediately did a second and third draft off line.  You see, I really liked the story.

When the idea of a new book of short stories came up, not only did I think the story Embers needed to be in it, I thought that it would make a great title.  You know, each story is an ember on its own, but together they make a fire.

At the time I was also thinking about using Foreword to my non-novel works.  My thought immediately went back to a comment on the third installation on the story by D. Wallace Peach.  It wasn’t the greatest comment I ever received, or even the best one from Diana, but it was an acknowledgment that my story was bringing across what I wanted.  It was one of those times where, for whatever reason, a comment became part of the story for me. Continue reading →

Embers -Kindle Preorder!

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Embers

The Kindle version of Embers is now available for pre-order!  The official release date for Kindle and paperback is Tuesday, December 4, just two weeks away.  If you re-order, it will automatically download when available.

Here are a few links to pre-order:

US
UK
CA
AU

Are you someplace else and want to pre-order?  Go to Amazon and search for my name.  You should be able to find it.

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Meeting at that corner of time where day and night become one, where dreams and reality mix, let’s stir the coals of that fire called ‘imagination’ to discover an eclectic mix of short stories.  Each story is a bit of frozen flame, an ember, that can flare up in your mind.

These embers form a collection of “tales that cover a wide range of genres, moods, and characters, from heartbreaking and heartwarming trials of love and family to thought-provoking journeys into the future. Most importantly, the stories are peopled with richly-drawn characters gifted with unique voices, emotional depth, and the power to capture the imagination. They’re stories that will stick.” – Author D. Wallace Peach

So whether you only have time to warm yourself with a very short work of flash, or you want to get cozy and lost in a novella, there is a story, an ember, in here for you.

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More on Embers – Short Stories

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book cover for Embers

I don’t know how others chose stories for a collection. Here is the story of Embers, the book.

I wrote a list of candidates and then read through the stories twice, using a different order each time, and graded them.  I also sent most of the stories to two other people. I already knew about some, both plus or minus, so didn’t send those.  We sat down and talked about how they felt about each story.  I then took their input and my two grades and came up with a final score.  At this point I knew about half of the ones I ended up including and I knew a whole bunch I was not going to use.  It was those others, the in between stories that I liked but wasn’t totally sold that they were 100% right.  One day I just went through the list and wrote a plus or minus beside each story and that was it.  I put each story that earned a ‘plus’ as a separate file in a folder then decided on the order.  Thus I made the book.

Funny thing is that after the book was made, I started finding all types of connections between the stories.  The one that stood out the most for me was that most of them took place at twilight, either dusk or dawn.  Maybe it was just a climatic moment at the beginning or end of the day, but sometimes it was the entire story.  OK, a few took place at noon or midnight, but even in these few stories there is something that has the feeling of twilight.

I noticed other connections as well, but I will leave up to the readers to discover them :)

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Embers – The Blurb

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book cover for Embers

One of my least favorite parts of writing, even worse than editing, is writing a blurb ;)  Oh well, it has to be done.  Here is the blurb to my upcoming collection of short stories, Embers.  What do you think?

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Meeting at that corner of time where day and night become one, where dreams and reality mix, let’s stir the coals of that fire called ‘imagination’ to discover an eclectic mix of short stories.  Each story is a bit of frozen flame, an ember, that can flare up in your mind.

In the words of D. Wallace Peach, author of the Rose Shield series, these embers form a collection of “tales that cover a wide range of genres, moods, and characters, from heartbreaking and heartwarming trials of love and family to thought-provoking journeys into the future. Most importantly, the stories are peopled with richly-drawn characters gifted with unique voices, emotional depth, and the power to capture the imagination. They’re stories that will stick.” (Taken from the foreword of Embers.)

So whether you only have time to warm yourself with a very short work of flash, or you want to get cozy and lost in a novella, there is a story, an ember, in here for you.

*** Continue reading →

Cover Reveal – Embers (Short Stories)

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book cover for Embers

Yes, I have another book in the works, a book of short stories.  I call it “Embers“.  One of the short stories is Embers, which was actually named from a #writephoto challenge by Sue Vincent.  That story is in five parts, with the first being written for the challenge.  And, of course, each short story can be thought of as an ember, a little nugget of imagination packaged up in a self-contained short story, ready to burst into flames in your mind.

See that picture at the top of the page?  Yep, that is the book cover.  Maybe ;)  I’m doing my own cover again, so it is possible it will be tweaked as time goes on.  It should be pretty close to the above, though.

I am currently shooting for a December 4th release date.  Just in time for Christmas ;) Continue reading →

Stories, Stories, Stories

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Fiction

A few months ago I discussed doing a book of short stories after I put out The Halley Branch.  Currently I am in a bit of a hiatus.  I have some people beta-reading The Halley Branch and I’m not doing anything else.  I decided that I should go through and pick out stories to include in the story book.  Most of my stories are currently first draft, so I have a lot of work to do once I decided on which ones to include.  It would be nice to start now so I can do at least two more drafts of each story, possibly three or four (I did four drafts for Seasons of Imagination).

When I did Seasons of Imagination I had a couple of people go through a couple of hundred stories and pick out their favorites.  I read through all of them at least twice, trying to pretend they weren’t mine and grading them all.  I sat down with the lists and one of the alpha-readers and decided on the final list.  I passed it by both of these “alphas” to see what they thought and got two thumbs up.  Easy.

Well, neither of my alphas are available now.  There is nobody out there that I could possibly ask to go through a couple of hundred short stories (300 – 15,000 words, with an average of about 2,000).  I mean, do you want to read through several hundred thousands words and pick your favorite?  I didn’t think so.  So I have been reading through them.

Not easy. Continue reading →