The Missing Link Project

I've been thinking a lot lately about linked short story collections (or story cycles, or novels in stories), partly because my recently published book, In an Uncharted Country, is a linked story collection, and I've written an as-yet-unpublished novel in stories, but also because it's a topic on which I'll be speaking at a conference next month.

As I gather my thoughts--what are these different animals?--and what are the strategies that various authors have chosen for linking their stories?--...