Way back in early October I was invited by some friendly associates at the cafe to participate in an anthology of horror-themed writings for publication before Halloween. I initially balked, but the more I got to thinking about it, the more these little tendrils took root, and I found myself grabbing a recorder and blurting out the initial plot of a story, slowly unfolding it from scene to characters to some end result. When I had that down, I had no choice but to commit, accept the offer, to submit a writing to the anthology.
Thus began over a week of naming characters, creating scenes, and hammering on a keyboard in my bedroom, undistracted by the world. Some 5300 words later, I had a fully-formed short story that passed through two rounds of draft and revision before I submitted it to the group a mere 3 hours before deadline. The leaders of this little assemblage of Epoch Coffee literary regulars were to take our stories, pair them with some artwork, and compile them into both an online and print publication. How cool!
So we all waited with bated breath on the announcement of publication. And we waited. And we continued to wait. And then Halloween came and went. And then Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year’s Day. Hints and rumors, but no publication. Due to an unfortunate series of personal events and production setbacks, the core designers of the group never finished the publication. You can say the follow-through fell through. So I made a decision.
As much as I would have loved to have my work paired with many other works of the same horror vein; as much as the whole would’ve been greater than the sum of its parts; as much as I would’ve dreamed of having outside readers stand up and say, “Damn, these people can write!”, I think I would rather publish my own story on its own than have it not published at all.
So I’ve created Fiction, a new page on this site, as the library of works that I choose to self-publish. It is here that I have made my first self-publication: this short story called “To Dust”. It follows the crew of the trading ship Paladine as they pick up a mayday transmission from the lost ship Janus orbiting the holy planet of Salim; they divert their mission to render aid and end up trading more than they bargained. It’s a hard sci-fi space horror and is packaged in both Epub (for your e-reader) and PDF form (for printing).
Any constructive feedback you have is more than welcome. Thank you.