Tag Archives: short stories

A Question of Short Stories

I like to write short stories.  I guess you can tell since I write quite a few of them, perhaps an average of two a week, if we count the 100 word Friday Fictioneers stories.  Sure, 90% of the stories I write and post here are very 1-dimensional “flash fiction” stories.  They are quickly written, very short and have very little meat as far as characterization, plot depth, sub-plots, etc.  That doesn’t mean I can’t take them and flesh them out.

Back at the beginning of the year I self-published my first book, Seasons of Imagination.  It is a collection of short stories.  All but 4 had been “published” in some form on my blog, but they were all also greatly revised before making it to print.  That is, what I posted on my blog was little more than a first/rough draft while I went through at least five more drafts in the nine months between the time I made the final decision on which stories to include in the book and when I clicked “publish”. (FYI – After deciding on the stories, I deleted them off of my blog)

Since the cutoff date back for stories to include in Seasons of Imagination at the beginning of April in 2016, I have written some of my favorite works of short fiction.  I think my writing has grown.  I hope so, at any rate! Continue reading

Looking for Something to Read ;)

It’s a been a while since I’ve done a post about my short story collection Season of Imagination.  I know, I know, people really don’t go for books of short story written by unknown authors.  But, sometimes it’s nice to read fiction and know you don’t have to commit days to it.  Here is a bit about it, for those who don’t know:

Trent P. McDonald’s Seasons of Imagination contains an eclectic mix of stories covering many places, times and even different genre, yet they all hold one thing in common, they are all about people.

Be they silly, serious or speculative, all of the stories are about us.  What makes us tick?  Why do we say the things we do?  Why do we react as we do?

So whether it seems the stories are exploring outer or inner space, in reality they’re always exploring the human space.

Here is an invitation to open the page and come with me to explore the

Seasons of Imagination Continue reading

Goodreads Review of Seasons of Imagination

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A couple of weeks ago I received a great review for Seasons of Imagination on Goodreads and I totally forgot to put up a post to brag about it to let you know about it.  the review came from Carol Masciola, whose book The Yearbook (in my words, a YA time travel romance with a physiological edge) I reviewed last November. Continue reading

My Little Advert :) (Seasons of Imagination)

It’s a been a while since I’ve done a post about my short story collection Season of Imagination.  I know, I know, people really don’t go for books of short story written by unknown authors.  But, sometimes it’s nice to read fiction and know you don’t have to commit days to it.  Here is a bit about it, for those who don’t know:

Trent P. McDonald’s Seasons of Imagination contains an eclectic mix of stories covering many places, times and even different genre, yet they all hold one thing in common, they are all about people.

Be they silly, serious or speculative, all of the stories are about us.  What makes us tick?  Why do we say the things we do?  Why do we react as we do?

So whether it seems the stories are exploring outer or inner space, in reality they’re always exploring the human space.

Here is an invitation to open the page and come with me to explore the

Seasons of Imagination Continue reading

Release Party! (Seasons of Imagination is Out!)

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Thank you all for joining me today for this celebration of my first book, Seasons of Imagination, being released.  I know this was an impromptu gathering, though you can’t say I didn’t give you hints it was coming up.  Sorry about that bump in the red carpet that I just couldn’t flatten out.  I hope not too many of you twisted your ankle or anything.  You just need to be careful..

Be careful!  Careful!!! CAREFUL!!!

Sorry!

Of course the person bringing in the cake had to be the one who tripped.  Sorry, I do still have some left over hors d’oeuvre from yesterday’s Cover Reveal, so help yourself.  I hope they’re not stale. Continue reading

Cover Reveal – Seasons of Imagination!

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So, what do you think?  Great, isn’t it?  This amazing cover was created by Belinda over at Idiot Writing.  She is a great artist and poet.  I couldn’t be happier with the cover she created!

Here is the full story behind this great image.  I had an idea of what I wanted.  I did a couple of quick sketches for the layout and then sat down with color pencils and made a drawing.  I thought the drawing was pretty good (I may post it some day).  I had my cover!  I showed Belinda and she said she could touch it up a bit, get it in shape for publishing.  Fine, there were a lot of little issues.  She played with it a bit, made some fixes and a few small changes, but it just wasn’t gelling.  I made a comment and we realized she had missed one of the points I was trying to make.  It was the image’s fault, not hers.  With the new knowledge in hand she made major, major changes, pretty much reworking it from scratch.  And it was marvelous.  Continue reading

I Need You! (beta readers)

You

I’ve posted a few times that I’m working on a book of short stories.  Most of the editing has been completed so I need a beta reader or two (or three).

As I said, I’ve done most of the large scale editing and loosely put the book together.  I’m looking for some input on things such as do all of the stories work?  Does the order make sense?  Are there large scale problems with any of the stories?  Punctuation, grammar, and little details like that will come after I do this phase.  I will take recommendations, make corrections, then finish it up and send it out to be edited at that low level. Continue reading

Does Size Matter (Short Story Questions)

Fiction

As many of you know, I have been going through my short stories, both those that I have posted here (over 110!) and those I haven’t (only looking at a handful of these) to pick out the best for a collection of short stories I want to self-publish.    I’ve also been doing a little research into it.  Instead of clarifying it, the research seems to muddy the waters.  So, keeping in mind I am going to do with it what I want to do, I’d like to ask you a few questions.

Size is an important issue, both in the length of the book and the stories themselves. Continue reading

Reorganizing and Fiction

Fiction

I haven’t updated some of the static pages on my blog in ages so I decided to do a little housecleaning today.  Where I started was the fiction page, which hasn’t been updated since last August.  A lot has happened since then!  There are actually 2 pages, one with descriptions and thumbnail images and one without, just a plain list of names and dates.  I will soon look at my 750 Word (or less) stories page (last updated May 2015).  Since I’ve been doing a lot of flash fiction I’m not totally sure if I’ll add them in, perhaps at the bottom of the page.  I also need to update my poetry page (last updated April 2015).  I may recreate my music page, too.

After updating the fiction pages I did a quick count.  Not including the 29 chapters of The Halley Branch I have posted around 110 different short stories on my blog.  If you get rid of the 100-word or less flash-fiction stories and a handful of stories i wrote to prove a writing point, there are still almost 100 stories.  I also have a dozen or so stories that I decided were too long to post.  OK, I’ve posted 6000 word stories here, so I’m sure you can guess that these are pretty long. Continue reading