Well, sort of putting together a short story collection. It’s just going to be for me and a few select people, you see. But I’ll still be excited to have this stuff in a nice printed package, even if only to put the stories behind me and get cracking on new work.
See, it’s like this. I’ve dabbled a small bit in short stories over the last 10 years. Not as much as I’d like — there will be about 15 stories included in this collection, give or take — but enough to have amassed a good little stack of them. Some have been accepted for publication. Most have not. One was adapted into a comic. Most I’ve just been sitting on.
But in 2010, you don’t have to just sit on this stuff if you don’t want to. Services like Lulu mean I can quickly, cheaply, and easily get them between covers for my own enjoyment. I can do this privately, which is how I want it. This won’t be a self-published book because no one except the people reading this blog will know it exists, and it won’t be something I’d be selling or plugging or making available to others or whatever. It’s for me. For me and a very few others. Nothing more than a personal keepsake.
When all is said and done, I’ll have a nice book of my stories sitting on my bookshelf. In a sense, that will finally put these stories to rest. They’ll be “done” in a way they’re not done now. And that will in an odd way make me feel free to move on to newer, better work.
So that’s cool.
I’m glad services like this didn’t exist 15 years ago. I’d have abused the world with terrible, terrible writing.
