WIP Wednesday: The Lost Afterword

I dipped my toes in self-publishing (or Indie if it suits you) last April with The Bottom Feeders. Since then, between the free edition, Kindle, and Smashwords, well over 200 readers have picked up the book. Much has changed in the world of self-publishing in the last year. To mark The Bottom Feeders anniversary, I'm prepping it for print.

I've written a little afterword for The Bottom Feeders (print), and here she is:

As part of my day job, I tell my students (high school juniors and seniors) never to apologize for their writing. A nervous sixteen-year-old often sputters and us, afraid to show his or her work to the class.

Get over it, I say.

No excuses. No apologies.

I won't make any excuses for The Bottom Feeders. No apologies, either. These stories have their fair share of blemishes and errata. An earlier electronic edition contained several formatting errors. The prose in unwieldy at times, but its mine. All of it. The Bottom Feeders represents the best of my early work. These stories have life and memory. "Everything in its Place" was my first commissioned sale. "The Bottom Feeders" marked the time I juggled the balance between my past and the fictional universe I was creating. "Tesoro's Magic Bullet" will always be a reminder of the struggle: a story accepted to a market which I'd tried to break into a dozen times before getting it right.

Along the way, I found my voice. I hope you can hear something of the small-town Kansas kid with much love for vintage EC comics, Saturday morning cartoons, and Boris Karloff's staggering monster.

I'll keep telling stories.

Thanks for reading them.

(And, of course you can still get the electronic edition for Kindle or other formats at Smashwords for only 99 cents.)