I just had a pleasant experience. I got a notice that Kevin Newsome, author of the great Christian suspense book WInter that I have reviewed previously, came by and read my review. It’s nice to know that other authors are out there, doing what I am doing, namely wondering what people are thinking about my books.
And recently I have gotten some pretty good reviews, specifically for the Champion series that came out this summer. I will have to admit that even though I also launched Infinity’s Reach this summer and I am proud of it, I am somewhat partial to the trilogy that I spent six years writing.
But now they are out there, my children, naked before the world, warts and all….Well, we won’t go there, but the point is, what next?
Actually, if you have been reading this blog faithfully over the past couple of months, you might have seen a few short stories that I have written. Writing them serves me twofold: first, they allow me to take an idea and see if it has much merit. Writing a novel is a major investment of time, energy and creativity. Writing a short story is much less so. And so I have been writing short stories from ideas that originally were considered for books. Some of them may end up as a book someday, and the process of writing them out as a short story helps me see the possibilities.
Second, as I did in 2012, I intend to produce an anthology of short stories and make it available to the public. When I first came out with The Stranger and Other Stories, my intention was to make the e-book available free of charge. That’s when Smashwords was my main outlet to the world. Now that I primarily use Kindle, I’m not allowed to give them away, except on rare occasions. And so I am forced to charge $.99 for the collection of stories. I have eleven now; my plan is to try to gather 15 before I release them. Plus, since I just came out with four books, I probably will wait a bit.
When that is done, who knows. I really would like to participate in National Novel Writing Month in November. That’s the 30-day challenge to write a 50,000-word novel. For those who haven’t tried it, it seems crazy, especially if you are a full-time worker or student. But I have done it three times and learned a great deal every time I do it. I probably will take one of my short stories and flesh it out into another book, but we will see. A great deal of it depends on how busy my day job–teaching–keeps me.
School is almost upon us, and my days are rapidly filling up with meetings (yay). And so I will keep in touch while I can, but don’t expect anything overly profound.
Of course you don’t. You’re reading my blog….
The Great Adventure 