Short Stuff

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Short Stuff

Side projects. Sometimes, they come out of nowhere. They jump up, refocus your priorities, and promise they won’t take much of your time.

A group of Science Fiction / Fantasy authors on Goodreads decided to create an anthology of their short stories. When I read about this, a short story suddenly leapt out at me and demanded my attention. I told it that I was working on my second novel and that I didn’t have a lot of spare time. It curled around my brain and said that it could share time and I could work on both projects simultaneously. I asked it if it really knew me at all. It then sank its fangs into my mind and told me that it was only pretending to give me a choice.

So, I dove into it. In the beginning, the story was very dark and rather depressing. I liked the basic idea, but not the way it was delivered. I added another character and rewrote the intro. The entire story came to life. Before I knew what was happening, I was halfway through it and wasn’t even sure where it was going. I came up with an ending, and pushed forward. I got up to the last 2,000 words or so, and the story dug its claws in. I suddenly realized that it had a completely different ending in mind, so I went back and rewrote the finale. When the story was finished, it lay there, purring contentedly and occasionally flicking its tail along my brain stem. That’s a strange sensation.

The stories are being collected by the end of July and the anthology will be published on Smashwords in the August/September timeframe. It will be offered for free and I’ll post links to it here at that time. My short story is titled, The Imaginary Invasion. I hope you enjoy it. As side projects go, this was a lot of fun.

Yes, it told me to say that.