Hello, my fellow creatives! Yup, I’m posting a day early. With everything happening in the United States right now, I need to cut the Internet cord for a couple of days, but I also wanted to share this conundrum with you for input. Please take care, be safe, and be kind to all. x

“Any spooky movies you guys want to watch this year?”

“Nah,” Bash said with a shrug and went back to his robot schematics. Biff echoed his twin and went back to reading Red Green. And then, there was our eldest.

Blondie didn’t hesitate. “The Thing.”

I looked at Bo, uncertain. The kids were certainly older now, sure. We’ve shown them a few Rated-R things that we ourselves had seen at their age, like Die Hard and Predator. Blondie had watched Alien with Bo and I in summer and really dug it.

“You know it won’t be much like Thing from Another World,” Bo warns. “A 50s sci-fi movie is NOT the same as watching John Carpenter.”

“I know,” Blondie says with a grin. “I want practical effects.”

And I can’t fault the kid for that. Those are quite a rarity in today’s film. “Okay, Kiddo. But it’s intense. If it gets to be too much, you call it off, okay?”

She nods eagerly. “I handled Alien. I’ll be fine.”

Well, for those of you who’ve seen John Carpenter’s The Thing and Ridley Scott’s Alien, you’ll know there are some very different levels of horror and effects there. But I didn’t argue.

~*~

Now I’ll get into how that viewing experience went when we’re closer to Halloween and I talk about monsters, a terrifying, wondrous element I love in fantasy and scifi storytelling. Today we’re here because watching my daughter enjoy The Thing made me realize she was ready for something else, something I had never let her touch before:

My own storytelling.

She stared wide-eyed at the paperback in my hand. “You mean, your first book?  I can read it now?”

“You’ve shown you’re old enough for the language and the blood, Kiddo.” I set it down on her desk and feel…nervous. And a little sad.

What if Blondie doesn’t like what her own mother writes?

I miss those characters. They were a lot of fun.

But the publishing adventure did not go as planned, and unlike writing, teaching helps pay the bills.

What if Blondie doesn’t like it?

Is there any way to get back into the world of River Vine while also working on Line the Stars?

Later, when I was digging through old posts for a flashback for Instagram, I came across one of my ratings updates about short stories I had written as one-offs in the River Vine world.

I had originally written “The Stray” to give one of my major supporting characters some time to shine, and then my publisher thought it’d be great to create more short stories as a marketing tool–not an uncommon strategy for indie writers. At the time, it sounded like a win-win: I’m fleshing out characters, filling in little gaps that weren’t necessary to understand the novel, but could help add clarity to a few unknowns. And because they were free, they got scooped up quickly, which meant more eyes were seeing my name and my story-world.

With those short stories completed, I began developing a couple novellas: Night’s Tooth, and What Happened After Grandmother Failed to Die. Both of these novellas not only gave me a chance to dive into some historical events for my story-world, but they also gave me the chance to work on different genres. Night’s Tooth, which I did publish, is a fantasy western set in Wisconsin’s early days. What Happened is set in winter in the 60s in an old manor house hidden deep in Wisconin’s North Woods. I was stoked to get into some real horror writing, a genre that works well with creatures who live on souls.

When my publisher and I parted ways, I took those stories with me. I self-published Night’s Tooth.

Sumac stands in a whirlwind of snow and wolf howls. The hill crests just ahead, exposing the Mississippi River valley, a wild land white men think they can tame with their iron locomotives. One screams black smoke into the air as it crosses the new bridge spanning the river.

Only a white man would be so foolish as to thrust his steel and stone into sacred water.

Sumac picks a tough bit of muscle from between his teeth and flicks it onto the peddler who served his supper. The peddler doesn’t mind. Doesn’t mind the loss of his coat or scarf, either. Likely minded the loss of his life, but that’s the food chain.

The short stories, though? They sit in my computer’s memory like alien entities sleeping in ice.

And THAT is why we are here, my friends. To republish or not to replublish?

I find myself wondering if those short stories could be grouped into a collection to sell, or if they should once more be let loose online as free reads to give my two Fallen Princeborn novels some attention. Each of those stories ties back to the first novel in some way, exploring different events through time before the novel that reveal how some minor characters work or what my protagonists were like before meeting each other.

I went back a generation to reveal a human family’s history with River Vine.

“You’re not magic!” Buddy spits. He knocks the spinning donut out of the air. It explodes on the squirrel’s tree trunk, and Buddy nods, like he could somehow erase a floating donut from memory. “You’re just a weirdo from the road. Go away or else!”

“Not magic?” Jamie gasps as though wounded. “Blasphemy!”

“Do a trick!” Leave it to Jake to be the most eager of skeptics, demanding proof. “Prove why you’ve got that yucky face.” 

“Leave’em alone, you guys!” Athanasius whines, but Jamie gently sets the boy on the grass.

“No no, my boy, it’s all right. I have just the trick, thanks to my . . .” he pauses. Even Jake can see the squirrel’s staring at Jamie with matching purple eyes, only these look mad. “Pet. Here, boy.” The squirrel chatters up a storm and won’t come.

I traveled the Water Road to show what it’s like when a velidevour takes hold of a child’s dreams.

I know the homeless people in our town because I help Mom with the free lunches our church holds a few times a month. This guy was new. A hitchhiker? That was more a summer thing.

What the heck was he doing out there? Just, hands in his pockets, standing in dirt and snow, and . . . looking.

At my window.

The wind blew a bunch of snowy ice off the trees. It whipped his coat around his knees, it blew his black hair around his face, but he didn’t move.

Captain Whiskers took one look at him and totally freaked out a gazillion times worse than yesterday. He hissed and spat and crapped and ran around my room and clawed the closet door so bad—no way I could cover that up from my folks. Stupid cat. I yelled at him to stop, turned to the window again, and—

—that guy was walking through our field. Not that h-e-double-toothpicks fast-walk old people do instead of jogging. Just this steady step, step, step toward the house.

I watched my male protagonist cripple one loyal to him…and later realize it was he was the servant to a far more wicked creature.

Campion steps out of the darkness and into the light, still donning the dapper silver suit he wore outside the Wall. He points with his cane above his head before resting it against the back of his neck.

Ember swallows back her disgust. “So. You’ve chosen a side, I presume.” She nods up at the flaming ceiling.

“With one of them?” Campion nudges his cane slightly into the air. “Yes. The Master is becoming withdrawn and morose. At least the Lady rewards those who are loyal. It won’t be long before she starts punishing the defiant. She may even consider you her first.”

Ember scoffs. “And starts condoning the mutilations, I presume.”

“Well you have to admit, it’s much easier hauling hearts over the Wall than bespelled humans.”

*

“No.” I jerk my head away. “No more toys.”

She blinks. Though her face is smooth and she takes care to curve her body into mine, I can see the stars in her eyes shifting once, twice, thrice. She’s trying to figure out my motives.

And her uncertainty in how to handle me after being so adept for a hundred years…I find myself feeling almost good. Almost.

The candlelight ripples gold in her hair as she turns to face the pilot. “Very well. We will carve him together. I can hold your hands…” her silky voice licks my ear as her cheekbone brushes my jaw. Her hands are on my hips before I can think, that voice so smooth and lulling…

…and yet, when I smell her now, I only smell the damp of underground. The cold. The old ash and bone. The mud. The rot.

In all our years together, she’s never smelled alive.

I set the stage for the mystery of the night my male protagonist is attacked and cursed.

[Arlen] steps closer to the drawing table. The candles are burning low, and will soon go out. The young master sits.

Still.

Silent.

Bleeding.

His face is wrinkles as if in a pained sleep. His fingers grip the arms of his chair for now… and forever, if another cannot be found to pull out the magic blade that’s driven through chair and body both. Even though Dorjan argues with another outside, all Arlen can discern is the quiet pat pat pat of the poor master’s blood.

I pulled the curtain back on the terror my female protagonist could wreak on others who pay too much attention to her little sister.

Charlotte bites down on her sucker. The crack of the candy echoes down the hall. “You know, a wise old man—a cop, no less—named Harry Callahan once said, ‘A man’s got to know his limitations.’ Wouldn’t you say that’s right, Chetty Chetty Bang Bang?”

All Jackets step back.

All but the kid.

Clueless he stands alone, he puffs up his chest, slaps his leather, and says, “Bitch, please, you ain’t got nuthin’ on Anna Aegir. That girl is hot. You’re a fucking dumpster fire.” He laughs again.

Charlotte right-crosses the kid and yanks his collar, thrusting him downward. But before he can hit the ground, she elbows his jaw, knees his chest, and slams him into the locker. She’s still got the sucker stick in her mouth as she presses her arm into his head, stomps her shoe down on his foot— “Guys, she, guys!” He can barely pronounce the words, Charlotte’s got him pinned so tight. He whimpers, tries to swing, but she just grabs his wrist and twists. Hard. Too hard.

And damn, if I wouldn’t mind trying a little horror once more by sharing what did happen when a girl’s grandmother failed to die. It’s a dangerous thing defying Death, you know. Especially when you have something precious and powerfully magical hidden in your house of horrors…

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had two brothers: one elder, and one younger. They lived with their parents in a forest filled with wild things in a vast house built of secrets and fear. No window allowed a view into the house from the outside. The brick walls were so unpleasant no vine wanted to climb them. The house, named Crow’s Nest for reasons which will later be revealed to you, looked out upon the forest with its mirrors eyes as if it loathed its own surroundings, but had nowhere else to go.

It was the perfect place for to live if you were an explorer, which is just what the girl and her brothers deemed themselves to be.

But while I enjoy these ventures as a writer of the world, I know the short stories have a bigger impact on those who have read the novel(s) first, as that gives them a baseline, as it were, to the world and its rules. The short stories aren’t homework for the novels, but I could see a reader telling me the novels are homework for the short stories. A marketing tool shouldn’t be homework.

Plus, I’m already deep in the worldbuilding and drafting of my Line the Stars trilogy without a clear timeline for writing the third novel in the Fallen Princeborn series. Perhaps it’s better to leave these stories in the ice for now, marked where I can find them when the time comes to chisel them out.

Yes, herein lies the conundrum. Have you had success using free stories online to build your author platform? Are you one who likes to splinter themselves between different projects? If so, how do you do it? I would love to hear your thoughts!

In the meantime, I’ve more author interviews on the way, a new podcast episode, and yes, monsters.

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!