Righting a wrong

Back in 2018, I released a novella titled “Spirit of the Dead”. To be honest, it should be called an attempt at a novella, as it was actually a couple short ideas that I cobbled together in order to hit an appropriate page count.

It has some redeeming qualities, though… there are some solid characters who developed nicely throughout, a locale that has tons of potential, and the base story itself isn’t bad at all. It has a unique twist that I haven’t seen used anywhere before, so it’s not worth discarding.

Instead, I’m going to reverse engineer it, strip away the unnecessary parts and filler fluff and then fully develop the good stuff, doing a complete rewrite to let it grow into a novel that’s been properly crafted and executed. Take the time and patience to do it right is probably the best way to phrase it.

My goal is to let this story be what it should have been in the first place, and use that experience to step away from the short story factory that I’ve become and write some novels. It’s about time.

That said, I’ll still crank out shorts when the idea for them is good and it fits well, but I need to expand, to grow, to dip my toes in the big boy pool (and hope like hell they don’t shrivel up like prunes).

It’s gonna be an adventure!

My original cover for Spirit Of The Dead