Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Shades--an eBook of short stories

I'm continuing on with my eBook adventures. For those curious I posted about the creation of both
and as eBooks here.
So as my next project I decided to gather all of my short stories together under one name and release them (very few anthologies get published in the print world, so it was a chance to bring these stories back to life). First, I hunted through all my files and came up with 17 short stories that I thought were presentable. Many had been published previously or broadcast on radio and a few were orphans whom I believed deserved their moment on stage. It's a really eclectic collection--fantasy, horror, literary fiction, humorous, irreverent, violent and, well, weird. They do span the length of my career. I rarely write shorts stories (only 17 so far that are publishable) whereas I've written 16 published novels (and 6 unpublished novels). The curious thing is that they almost all ended up for an older YA/adult audience.

I gave the collection the title Shades in an attempt to describe the eclectic styles (there are all different shades of stories) and I bought an image at http://www.istockphoto.com and made my own cover. I'm pleased with the cover, though I feel it's utilitarian, but it shows some of the mystery of the stories. I may give it a new cover further down the road.



Here's a short description of a few of them and a guesstimate of when they were written.

Stubb This is my most recent short story. All about a boy who may be a werewolf. (2007)
Snow White and the Seven Elves a snarky retelling of the fairytale. (1997)
Garbage Day A young boy has a tough home life. He wants revenge. Exactly what does he put in the garbage? (1992)
Fairytale I seem to be channeling Ray Bradbury in this story. I could draw a direct line from it to Dust. (1993)
The Jesus Trilogy Three short looks at Jesus. Two have to do with the resurrection and one with Pontius Pilate and a rodeo. They are written in a bluesy style. (1997)
Virtual Dragon A cyberpunk kung fu story. Because...well...the world needs more cyberpunk.(1995)

And that's just a few of them.


They're available at Amazon (kindle) and Smashwords (most every eReader). Just visit the links here. It's fun to have the stories out there again. They usually have such brief lives.

Art

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