The other day, I made a list of all the stories I’ve written for Turtleduck Press. The purpose of the exercise was to have a handy reference to use for possible reprints (reselling the stories to other markets). But along the way, I got to reread some of them and remind myself what I’d done…
Assuming I haven’t missed anything, I’m up to 18 (!) stories published through TDP. (Some of them are in our anthologies, others are freebies, and we decided to take the oldest ones down.)
Yeah, that’s a lot…even I was surprised! But the math adds up. We’ve been publishing short stories since January 2011, and I’ve published 2-4 stories here every year since. (Okay, the math doesn’t quite add up. There was the serial that spanned a year, and now I’m embarking on another….)
They’re all lengths, from under 1000 words up to 10,000, and all genres, secondary-world fantasy and Gothic and post-apocalyptic and steampunk and even poetry. Doing our anthologies has taught me how to write in the 7,000 – 10,000 word range (technically known as novelettes). Lacking inspiration with deadlines looming has taught me how to write very short, but still complete, stories. 😉 Oddly enough, I haven’t done much in the traditional short story length, 2000 – 5000 words, for a while. (Less oddly, I haven’t yet sold any stories in that mid-range length to markets outside of TDP, either.)
Rereading my old stories has made me realize that I write with a kind of innocence. Grimdark will never be my jam. I’ve always loved writing stories that end with sweetness and light, sometimes bittersweet but always uplifting and hopeful. (Maybe it’s a surprise that it took me so long to start writing romance…) Literary I am not, although I do love me some carefully crafted, richly descriptive language. Give me an element of adventure, a fun SF or fantasy setting with interesting cultural elements or other worldbuilding to get my teeth into, and a character striving to come into their own, and I’m a happy writer.
Now I just need to do more of that…
Onward!