The Top 5 Things That Surprised Me After I Released The Electric God and Other Shorts

Even after writing five books (three if you don’t count my poetry and blog books), I still learn something new every time I release another one. Case in point: The Electric God and Other Shorts. It was my first collection of short stories, so it wasn’t exactly the same as the others, but I was still surprised to learn the following five facts:

The critics’ favorite story was the title one.

This surprised me because, if you’ve really been paying attention to my blogs, I noted that The Electric God isn’t my favorite, second favorite, or even third favorite story in the book (for the record, it’s my fourth favorite), and that I only picked it as the title of the book—and the first story to kick off this collection—because it was my favorite title. Did the critics single this story out time and again because they assumed it was my favorite, too? Or were they just lazy and only read the first story and a few others before calling it a day? I’ll never know, so it will forever remain, in the immortal words of C+C Music Factory, a “thing that makes you go ‘Hmmm.’” And speaking of the critics…

2. Critics—even the big ones—still give away the endings to stories.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too shocked at this one, as Publishers Weekly originally gave away the ending to Danger Peak before I fought them to remove the reveal in their review. That’s right; a book whose entire hook is, “What’s on top of Danger Peak?” had a review give away exactly what was on top of said mountain. How do these hacks sleep at night? Okay, “hacks” is too strong a word, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when a major critic—again Publishers Weekly—gave away the twist ending of How to Save a Drowning Butterfly. Not to give too much away, but the second short story in the book purposefully begins in a very vague place; the reader isn’t supposed to know exactly where the main character is or what he’s doing. I kept that information secret until the very end of the story, like literally the last paragraph. Since the story is only around 25 pages, it’s not quite as big a deal as giving away the ending to a 200-page novel, but it still smarted, so I once again complained, and fortunately, the editor acquiesced. Hopefully, this is the last time I have this problem!

3. The book isn’t as dark as I feared.

I immediately warn people in the Introduction about how dark these stories get, but for the most part, people weren’t incredibly shocked at the violence and dark turns in the book, even from someone who wrote the relatively tame Danger Peak. Has our society become too cynical to such shocks? Well, that is one of the themes of the title story. But it still surprised me at how immune most readers were to the so-called “darkness.” Of course, there were a few exceptions, my favorite being the critic who noted: “(The author) states that these stories are dark. He was not kidding.” Then again, I believe that woman also runs a Christian blog.

4. People can’t get the title right.

I didn’t think my title would be that hard to understand (or read), but apparently, I was wrong. One reviewer thought the title was The Electric God and Other Stories, not “Shorts.” Still another thought the book was titled Electric Gods (plural, and missing the definite article “The”). Also, as a cousin was reading my book’s title on Amazon (she was curious to see the cover, so I showed her), she read aloud, “The Electric God and Other Short Stories.” As Charlie Brown famously emoted: *Sigh* Incidentally, I thought it’d be slightly cleverer with the title I chose; I assumed “Short Stories” was overplayed, so I went with “Shorts.” Maybe that was a mistake. (You know what they say when you assume.)

5. Most people would rather read a novel than a collection of short stories.

Inevitably, this is my most unfortunate surprise. A few Instagram reviews of my book were flooded with the following comments: “I don’t read short stories,” “Short stories aren’t really for me,” “I’m more into novels,” “Not my thing,” etc. And while The Electric God was once number 1 on Amazon in the category of Short Stories (albeit briefly), it appears so far that my first two books were selling more right out of the gate than my latest. Oh well. One of life’s bitter pills, I suppose. Could this be one more reason to hang up the ol’ pen (well, computer keyboard), as I threatened before that this may be my last book? Only time will tell, but, as they say, it’s all about the journey, bumps and all.

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In other MTP news, the Amazon eBook of The Electric God and Other Shorts will be on sale for $0.99 this coming week, from Monday, December 16th to Saturday, December 21st. That’s less than a buck! (albeit, only a penny less) That’s also nine bucks off the regular price! So if you’re looking for some last-minute gift ideas for the holiday you celebrate, give the gift of reading…eReading! (Am I saying that right?) This sale will only last a week, so get it before it’s gone! In the meantime, here is the Kindle link for The Electric God:

The Electric God on Kindle

I guess I buried the lede again. Oh well, I’ll get the hang of blogging eventually.

MTP

P.S.: Next blog: Another break

P.P.S.: The Electric God and Other Shorts is now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble:

The Electric God on AmazonBarnes & Noble