Working in short story series

Anybody who reads my work knows that most of what I do is short.  Short stories, short poems just plan short.  It isn't that I don't have a lot of words, it is that I don't believe it wasting them.  A short story is a snap shot of time, a scene to an act in the life of your characters.  Sometimes that snapshot will complete itself in just two pages and sometimes it is more like thirty of them.

Most of my tales average out around ten pages.  Now since I write in what I like to call series I bet you are thinking why dont I just hold off and put them into one book?  You see I take a common thread and write a lot of different tales under that thread.

In my Death Walks Through series the common thread is Death.  He is not the main character of each tale but he is there, in the background most times.  Those stories are ghost stories, not the scary, creepy ghost stories that are so popular on tv and in movies but little tales of souls searching for the end to their tales.  So far I have written ten of these little tales.  They truly are little tales because these ten little stories all total up to 25K so far. 

My next series of tales, Guardians of the Gate City, just got combined into a collection and published.  Six tales that come up over the 50K limit for a novel.  These stories are more interconnected than the Death stories because they focus on the main character, Harry Lionsey.  I have worked through a couple years worth of his life and introduced side characters that will be getting their own series.  The first Guardians of the Gate city side stories will be out next month.  That series will focus on characters like Sheldon, the dragon information broker.

Thirdly I have the Echoes of Elder Times series.  Now the tales in this series might not seem to be connected but they all have the feel of the ancient world to them.  Modern tales with ancient themes is what I planned when I started putting the tales out.

Next we have the Worlds Apart series.  These tales are of course about different worlds than our own.  They are written as science fiction or fantasy but the idea is the worlds are separate from our own but hold theme and characters that could have been our own.

Then I have Beyond Realities.  Like the series above it is our world but not our world.  Stories of just a step to the side of our own world.

My newest story series is going to be Myths of Love.  I have had The Knight Protector up for ages now but I had a handful of stories in the works that were more romance than the rest of my tales.  I recently added the series title to Knight Protector.  I have one more that will be going up next month and two more right now in the works.  They will be odd fantasy romances they may or may not have a happily ever after.

Of course I have collections out.  Two complete erotic collections in fact.  One with interconnected stories and one that is just a mix of a lot of erotic tales I wrote.  Two other series are of different kinds of erotic tales that I will some day compile into separate books, but not for a long while yet.

Then there is Gates.  This was the book that kicked me into self publishing.  The six tales in the Gates book all have some type of gate in the tale and if the publisher had done more than take my rough files and publish them I think it would have gone further.  For now it is a nice little collection and the first book I have in my hands of my own work.

Of course i have been found in a lot of anthologies over the past year.  Between my poetry and short stories I have added up a nice little set of anthology entries.  And speaking of my poetry I now have three collections of my poetry and photography up for sale.

I have rambled a lot here but that is the point.  There are a lot of ways to do your writing and writing short stories is one very fine way of doing it.

Morning sunshine all around

Well been a busy morning.  Lots of nice people giving us condolences on our loss.  As nice as it is I would rather we still had Stephen in our lives but these things happen.

The day is cooler thankfully.  Which made running to the store (okay walking we all know lisa cant run) to get the cocoa.  Gotta make the brownies soon.

Now writing wise it was cool to see this this morning:

http://bestindiebooks.com/great-indie-books/show-books/132/Gates/Short-Stories/

This is a site that advertizes indie author's books.  Now since I got in on the beta test my book is advertised for free.  Not huge when it is just links through to my amazon book but hey it is a start right?  Now if we can get those who link through to actually buy the book I would be happy. 

And it is a great deal after all.  The kindle copy, which is where the link goes, is a great deal.  99 cents for six awesome short stories.  How can you beat that right?

Well back to making another poem video.  Since getting Harry to tell me his story isn't working so well today I figured I have other avenues of expression.  Yeah I could move to Destiny's story or more of Loralil's tales but I want to put my poems out for reading too.

whoops forgot this isn't connected

Yeah silly me..I forgot I need to post on all my blogs, not just one.  Been so busy making book covers and book trailers, poem videos and well just plain writing.  So I will babble for a little here.  Yeah I have been posting stuff up on Amazon.  Got Echoes of Elder Times started and Guardian of the Gate City and of course Death Walks through.  All three series in the faces of those who are willing to read SHORT fiction over the overly long if well written novels out there.  I write short..we all know that.  Or those crazy people who read my stuff do.

Just put Ending, book one of the Saga of Loralil Greyfox up on Kobo.  Should take a couple of days for complete processing.  Now that one is a bit more pricey than my other stuff.  Being a complete (to me) novel I put it up for $3.99.  My Novella, The Knight Protector I had put up on Smashwords and Amazon at $2.99 and the short stories vary, either being 99 cents or $1.99 if they are longer.  So I am slowly taking over.  Not really but I am publishing.

I have had one sale of the paperback, and so far one sale of Partings, one of One More All Hallows Eve, One of Ice and one of Passing the Torch.  Too bad Night and Day hasn't seen movement since the free offering.  No one has bought it.

I have reviews and that is cool.

Partings has three, One More All Hallows has four, Night and Day has one and Passing the Torch has one.  Nothing so far on reviews for Knight Protector, Gates, Hope Everlasting or Ice.  Course Ice has only been up for about two days so I don't expect that one to have reviews as of yet.

I have been getting views on my book trailers and poem videos.  Even got a comment from one person.  So I guess that is a start.

Now it is too hot to stay here in front of my machine.  Time for a cold drink.

Finding yourself on the web

Okay this is so weird and cool at the same time.  I am now all over the web, again.  In the old days it was the silly websites I put together for fanfiction and poetry and my drawings.  Now it is my actual published work.  I enjoyed it in the old days but now...now it fills in a part of yourself that you didn't know you had.

I am showing up on places like ITunes, Versent Books, Inktera and of course my publishers site.  Now the more places I show up the more chance that someone will actually decide to buy my work.  While the paperback over on Amazon is pretty pricy, the Ebook copy on Itunes is very affordable at 99 cents.  So I am hoping...really really hoping that soon I will see some movement.

I have even posted Gates up on Craig s list and Kijiji.  Now it felt weird putting my book up on those sites but it needs to be done right?  I am right now just sitting here trying to decide if I should put Knight Protector up on those two sites.  It is a novella and a fun one in my opinion.  Course I wrote it so my opinion isn't necessarily unbiased right?

Okay back to writing and reading and trying to think of other ways to get the nice people out there to actually pick up my words and reading them.