Howdy everyone!
This post is a bit different than usual, but it’s officially been 1 year since I began my publishing journey, and I wanted to share some musings and news with y’all to celebrate!
But first of all, I wanted to say how grateful I am for all of you, my readers. Writing stories is fun, but there’s something really special about other people taking the time to read and appreciate them, especially when they tell me how much they enjoy these little tales. So, thank you everyone for all of your encouragement! I don’t think I could do this without you.
Now For the News:
It’s a rather busy time for House Bush, so my writing will be slower over the next few months. I’ve been poking away at a few short stories in my free time, but most of them aren’t polished enough to share with the world yet. I’ve also been working on a draft of an urban fantasy novel, The Green and the Wild, but the work is glacially slow. I’m loving it so far though, and I feel pretty happy with the outline for the rest of the book. And speaking of The Green and the Wild…
Even though the book’s not finished, I entered the first few chapters in a contest hosted by Realm Makers. And to my great surprise, it passed round 1! I don’t know if it’ll pass subsequent rounds, but no matter how far the book gets, I’ll at least get some valuable feedback from the judges. I’m really looking forward to seeing what they say, and it’ll be great to have those notes to help clean up subsequent drafts of my book.
I also have another flash fiction story that will be published with Havok on January 5th. It’s a fun little story about Janus, the two-faced Roman god, fighting to ensure the safe arrival of the New Year. Be sure to check it out!
And Some Year 1 Musings:
This year, I really thought I’d get more novel writing done, but life didn’t go as planned. A new job has kept me busy, so finding writing time has been tricky, and I’ve mostly focused on short stories. When I have a free afternoon, it’s a lot easier to hammer out a 1000 word story than a chunk of a novel!
However, despite my chaotic schedule, I have managed to publish several short stories over the last year, which has been a lot of fun! Havok published 3 of my stories on their website, and even took 1 of them for an anthology. I’ve said this before, but it’s really quite encouraging to have a neutral party love my works enough to publish them. Of those that have been published so far, I think Storing Up Treasures was my favorite. If you want to read it, you’ll need to buy the anthology or get a Havok membership, but $5 for a year’s subscription is a pretty good deal if you enjoy reading flash fiction!
I’ve also enjoyed sharing the occasional story here on Substack, and getting feedback and responses from all of you! I think I’ve only posted a few of them, but I hope to write and share more in the future. I know I’d mentioned posting a few more stories sometime back, but when I reread them, they just didn’t feel good enough to share yet. I plan to continue editing them though, and I hope to have more tales to share with y’all eventually! Of those I’ve posted here, I think A Time Between Spaces was my favorite, and it seemed to resonate with readers as well. (I’ve been mulling over a sequel, but haven’t written anything yet...)
Finally, I also published a few short stories on Kindle (among other publishing sites), which has been a lot of fun! I’ve been experimenting with different platforms and advertising methods, and I’m still not certain about the best way to share these stories, so I’ll probably continue to play around with it. I put them on Kindle Unlimited for a while, which is an exclusive subscription service for readers, but I didn’t really get reads there. I was also unable to upload the stories to other apps, like Nook or Apple Books, and I know some folks who like to read books on those platforms. So, I “went wide,” pulled them from Kindle Unlimited, and uploaded them to all the different sites. A few people read them on other platforms, but Kindle has remained the most popular, by far.
I’ve only uploaded 4 stories to Kindle, but I think they’re some of the strongest stories I’ve written. My Christian fantasy story, Wayfaring Stranger, is probably my favorite, and it’s also the first story I ever published. Folks in my writing group loved it so much, they threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t bring the rest of the story so they could know how it ended. That was very high praise indeed!
The Canyon of Se’l Hathoreth was a different type of tale for me, but I wanted to try my hand at cosmic/Lovecraftian horror. It’s set in my home state of Wyoming, and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out, especially the cover my wife helped me make!
I also wrote 2 connected short stories in a little series I’m working on, The Kineru Chronicles. This Christian fantasy series follows the adventures of Sepiron, a man tasked with eliminating the false gods that plague the lands of Kineru. I uploaded the first story, The Painter, for free to give readers a chance to try it out, and then uploaded the sequel, The Goddess of Storms, for a dollar. To my surprise, The Painter has gotten about 300 downloads so far, which is far more than I ever expected! I’m so grateful for all the people who have taken the time to read and review it, and I hope folks continue to give it a try in the future.
I have been working on a couple more Kineru Chronicles stories, but I’m not quite satisfied enough with them to publish yet. Keep an eye out though!
Anyway, that’s all the writing musings and news for now. Thank you all for encouraging me and sticking with me through this first year. My hope is to continue writing and entertaining for years to come. Stay tuned for more stories, and thanks for reading!
Congrats on your first year!! Here's to many more of them.
I get you with short stories, it's also less of an issue if you release on and it's a damp squib. Releasing a novel which crashes and burns hurts. I love writing shorts.
As Ray Bradbury said:
"If you can write one short story a week—it doesn't matter what the quality is to start, but at least you're practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones."