I’ve been writing short stories for far longer than I’ve written novels. I wrote a couple in 1979, but the first one I did anything with was called When the Wave Comes. It was around 1500 words and was an entry for a competition, way back in 2007. The brief was for a coming-of-age story in any genre. I did a sci-fi/fantasy take on the idea, with a potentially deadly test of manhood in a primitive society.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t win. I was devastated because I thought it was a pretty neat story that hit what they were looking for, albeit with a different approach to the subject than the eventual winner.
Ahh, the innocence of the new writer!
Fast forward to today, and I’ve been hunting down all my short stories from their scattered locations and amalgamating them into one document. It turns out that in all I have penned over 150 short stories and nearly 70 drabbles (100-word flash fiction pieces), totalling about 200,000 words.
They’re based on ideas I’ve had over the years, and prompts/suggestions from writers’ groups and various other places.
Some of the non-drabbles are only 500 words, others have up to 9,000. Several of them are inspired by characters or events in my novels, while some may even be novels of their own one day.
I say that because many of my novels started life as short stories that just kept going.
They range from Sci-fi to Steampunk, horror to humour. I’d forgotten about quite a few of them, and with the benefit of fresh eyes, I can see where several can be improved.
For example, a while ago I rewrote When the Wave Comes, it’s now over 5,000 words. I can see that it’s a lot better now. I even published the newer version on Medium back in 2024. To my surprise, it was boosted, gaining several positive comments.
Like these,
Going through all of the stories and rewriting them is a job for when I have nothing better to do, although I will have to be careful not to try to make novels out of them all.
A selection of my short stories are available for free on this website,
And audio versions of some others are on my YouTube channel.
If you read or listen to any of them, please let me know what you think.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do.
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