How Many Short Stories Have I Actually Published?

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the traditional start of the Lent season, wherein one is supposed to reflect upon their sins and mortality.

I spent all day shoveling out from the first wave of the blizzard and then getting my tax paperwork sorted out, and since death & taxes are the only constants in life, I suppose that counts as contemplating one’s mortality.

But! Since I didn’t have time to write and spent most of the day in spreadsheets anyway, it occurred to me it was time to figure out a recurring reader question.

Specifically, how many short stories I have self-published.

I know how many novels I have published – SEVENFOLD SWORD ONLINE: CREATION was #138. But I am uncertain of how many short stories I’ve published. I know it’s a lot – way back with GHOST IN THE FORGE in 2012 I wrote GHOST ARIA to accompany it as a free bonus for newsletter subscribers, and I’ve done that pretty consistently in the 11 years since.

So that’s a lot of short stories. But how many?

Once I had finished with tax spreadsheets, and dug in and started doing some math!

Frostborn short stories: 9 (This doesn’t include the short stories that went into FROSTBORN: THE SKULL QUEST since I had always intended to combine them.)

Cloak Games/Cloak Mage: 10

Cormac Rogan: 1

Demonsouled: 8

Dragonskull: 7

Shield Knight (Sevenfold Sword & Dragontiarna): 17

Caina (all series): 26

Otherworlds (found in the Otherworlds collection, written before I started self-publishing): 23

Silent Order: 4

Sevenfold Sword Online: 1

I think Caina has the most short stories because her character and the setting lend themselves the most to short side adventures.

Anyway, adds up to 106 short stories. 106! I wasn’t going to spend all day totaling up the word counts, but if you assume a reasonable average of about 5,000 words per story, that means in the last 11 years I have published over a half a million words of short fiction, and then given most of it away for free.

As of Ash Wednesday, 2023, I have published 138 novels and 106 short stories.

So when I say I really do like short stories, I’m clearly not kidding.

-JM