Short Thinking

by M. L. Buchman

I make a third of my living from short stories.

I'd like to pause right there and wind back the clock. Even a decade ago, this was so exceedingly rare as to be laughable. I had a friend who was a short story machine. He wrote three a week and he kept them in the mail until they sold--all of them. Some of those took three years and 20-30 submissions to sell. (Imagine the logistics of that: he produced ~150 stories per year and never let a rejection sit on his desk for more than a week (he had a weekly "mail everything" day), always launching it out to a new market. He got up to half a living with short fiction in an era when everyone agree that even that was impossible.

The present day, where we can sell directly to readers through Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, etc. has revolutionized that world.

However, let me clarify further, I make a third of my living with romance short stories. This actually is unheard of. I don't even have to wind back the clock. Present tense, there is one magazine for romance short stories: Heart's Kiss. 

So, imagine my surprise when my stories took off. Four years ago last winter, I'd sold a few to Fiction River Anthology Magazine and finally put one up for free on my website for a week just as a promo. And it started to sell. Sell! While it was free. When I took it off free, it really started to sell.

Total fluke, right?

So four years ago this month (I'm not the fastest learner), I tried another. Same thing. And another, and...

For four years now I have posted a free short story to my website on the 14th of every month, left it there for one week, and then watched it sell in wonder.

Now, there are some challenges here. If you don't read short stories, it will be much harder to write them. (Which was part of my excuse for years: "I only read novels so I only write novels.") However, when I finally thought to look at my bookshelf (which has been weeded through too many moves), I saw that many of the books I hung onto were short story collections. As a kid I inhaled short science fiction: Clarke, Asimov, Campbell, Hugo winners, Best of the Year, themed anthologies... I had spent the first decade or so of my reading life immersed in short fiction.

So, as a romance writer, I turned to find...an echoing desert. There were occasional anthologies of novellas, but not true short stories (5-12,000 words). Encouraged by my early success, I set out on a quest to learn to write short romance fiction.

A caveat: I'm a purist. Many people I've talked to about romantic short fiction say: "Getting a glimmer that they have a future together, that's enough." Or, "If I can get the meet cute to squeeze into a single story, that's a romance."

Nope! For me, a romance is only a romance when you get the full HEA. Probably the hopeful MGM musical romantic in me. It took a lot of practice to figure out how to get an HEA in a short story that also included the meet cute, but now it is one of my favorite forms.

Here's where it gets interesting! I started my short fiction in my military romance suspense series. I slowly learned how to move it over to my rapidly growing contemporary romance body of work. OR did I come to have a growing contemporary romance readership because I augmented it with short fiction? I strongly suspect the latter.

Now, finally, I'll take just the quickest peek ahead, which oddly enough is also a long look back. I love writing romantic suspense and contemporary romance and I don't ever see not writing them. But there's this love of science fiction that comes from all those years of wallowing in short stories. And I would love to build a science fiction readership to go along with my suspense and contemporary readership.

Therefore, I've started putting my foot back into SF as well. My fans have seen little blips of this in my few Future Night Stalkers stories. Now I'm going to do it in a regular way. Not free on my site, but instead collected with some of my favorite voices writing today in a quarterly anthology. Come on over, try it out. It's not all romance by any stretch (though I'll be shifting more and more SF rom in there as I learn how to write them), but it is some amazing reading!

JUST LAUNCHED: Boundary Shock Quarterly. #1, #2, #3

While you're at it, don't miss another of my romance short stories. Just subscribe to my newsletter to always get a reminder (and a free book too): http://free-book.mlbuchman.com/

M.L. Buchman started the first of over 50 novels and even more short stories while flying from South Korea to ride across the Australian Outback. All part of a solo around-the-world bicycle trip (a mid-life crisis on wheels) that ultimately launched his writing career.

Booklist has selected his military and firefighter series(es) as 3-time “Top 10 Romance of the Year.” NPR and Barnes & Noble have named other titles “Top 5 Romance of the Year.” In 2016 he was a finalist for RWA's RITA award.

He has flown and jumped out of airplanes, can single-hand a fifty-foot sailboat, and has designed and built two houses. In between writing, he also quilts. M.L. is constantly amazed at what can be done with a degree in geophysics. He also writes: contemporary romance, thrillers, and SF. More info at: www.mlbuchman.com.

Not the Anthology of Your Childhood Anymore!

by M. L. Buchman

As a young reader I was totally addicted to anthologies, especially in science fiction. I read almost every single anthology of Issac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke short stories. I particularly loved their interstitial introductions to tell me the background of their stories. I also was a rabid reader of Hugo and Nebula Award anthologies.

Version 1: Anthology Magazine
Then I sidetracked into novels for a long time and actually forgot about my love of the short form. When I became a writer, that carried over. "I don't read short stories, why would I write them?" I kept saying that until an editor got sick of it and said, "I'm making you a lead name in an anthology magazine, get over it. It's title is Christmas Ghosts." "But I don't write ghosts!" I won't use the adjective fulminating to describe her look as she's also a friend...so I'll just go with "disgusted."

So I entered the land of anthologies and short fiction as a writer simultaneously:

Amazon

Okay, so this looks like a perfectly normal anthology from my childhood: a theme, an editor, and multiple authors who were all paid up front. Except it isn't. This is issue #4 in a bimonthly magazine that now is coming up on four years and I've been in several other issues and, I'm told, will be in more to come.

Less than ten years ago this would have been incomprehensible. There are no ads, they pay pro-rates (and no, sorry, they don't accept queries or submissions of any sort). This would have been insupportable in the past. Thanks to modern publishing (e-book and POD and DIY audio) it is now completely viable.

Version 2: My Own Yearly Best Of!
I then took that idea to heart and created my yearly Ides of Matt series. Once my "I don't write short" was busted over my friend's knee, I discovered that I loved writing short stories. For over three years now, I have been writing short stories and releasing them for free on my website (www.mlbuchman.com) at the same time I publish them. I've especially fallen in love with writing romance short stories.

Which had led me to creating my own annual anthologies with introductions for each story.

More Info / Buy Links

But it just keeps getting better:

Version 3: Cooperative Anthology (Box Set / Collection / Bundles)
We all know what they are now. A box set used to be a true rarity (the complete Anne of Green Gables for example), and they literally came in a box. Now authors are creating massive ones with thirty novels all by different authors and smaller ones by two.

I'm presently doing one of the latter with the amazing Regency author Grace Burrowes. As my specialty is military romantic suspense, common ground appeared illusive. But we both wanted to set a story in the ranch country beneath Montana's Big Sky.

Well, no one in traditional publishing would have touched us with a ten-foot pole. Frankly, we'd have been laughed from the room even though we both write contemporary romance series...it's just not either of our core audiences.

But this is the new age, so that didn't stop us.

More Info / Pre-order links

What's perhaps even more curious, we're doing it as a 90-day box set (as in"Grab It Now, Or It's Gone!" marketing mentality). Utterly impossible to our old mindset of how publishing works...worked. Hmm...

Version 4: Unbound Anthology
Sometimes the titles aren't even sold together! I recently participated in a project called Titan World. Ten authors writing separate titles, all linked to an eleventh author's world (Cristin Harber, by permission and with contracts in place). It is more a cooperative marketing tool than an anthology, but it still fits the definition of one...doesn't it? Common theme, multiple authors. But no longer one set? But it is an anthology, they're all set within a single world. Double hmmm...

More Info

Version 5: "Limited by Your Imagination" Anthology
With the changes in technology and delivery now available to authors, the possibilities of ways to anthologize are unlimited! I can't wait to see what happens next.

M.L. Buchman started the first of over 50 novels while flying from South Korea to ride his bicycle across the Australian Outback. Part of a solo around the world trip that ultimately launched his writing career.

All three of his military romantic suspense series—The Night Stalkers, Firehawks, and Delta Force—have had a title named “Top 10 Romance of the Year” by the American Library Association’s Booklist. NPR and Barnes & Noble have named other titles “Top 5 Romance of the Year.” In 2016 he was a finalist for Romance Writers of America prestigious RITA award. He also writes: contemporary romance, thrillers, and fantasy.

Past lives include: years as a project manager, rebuilding and single-handing a fifty-foot sailboat, both flying and jumping out of airplanes, and he has designed and built two houses. He is now making his living as a full-time writer on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife and is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing and receive a free starter e-library by subscribing to his newsletter at: www.mlbuchman.com

The Danger of the Good

by M.L. Buchman

One of the great jokes on a writer is that most of the job is mental...okay, 99.999% of the job is mental. During my decades of corporate I'd say it was about <25%.

Oh sure, in corporate there were good days and bad days. Having a positive attitude made for a more pleasant working environment, made my teams function better, and made clients happier. But in corporate there was one implacable rule: it never stopped. A good day today didn't stop whatever s*** was about to roll down the pipe and plop on your desk the next morning. And having a truly crappy client call didn't mean that your presentation that afternoon wasn't going to rock and leave you feeling great. They might make me go a bit "mental" at times, but it was the job that did much of the mood making. My only choice was to make the best out of whatever plopped onto the desk.

Writing is about staring at a blank page and finding story. It's about writing through the times when the story isn't working, as well as when it's flying. And the joke on the authors is that something good can bump you off the tracks just as well as something bad.

My traditional press editor told me that Target Engaged (the first book of my new Delta Force romance series) is the best book I've ever written (not that she's read any of my dozens of indie books). Guess what? That simple bit of feedback made it almost impossible to write the next book in the series (Heart Strike will be out next August). How do I live up to the standard of "best ever?"

Simple answer: You don't!

You write the next book to be the best book you can at that moment in that place and time.

I can't begin to emphasize that enough. So, having just finished (finally) Heart Strike (and I'm quite proud of it actually), and understood the mayhem that simple compliment to Target Engaged had caused me, I thought I finally had the "Danger of the Good" under control...

HA!

Last week I found out that Hot Point had been chosen as a Top 10 Romance of the 2015 by Booklist. Then they offered a compilation of the Best 101 Romance Novels of the Last 10 Years which had two of my books on it.

Now the challenge is to go back to that blank white page and simply write the best book I can. Harrumph! Saying I need to do that and actually doing so are a world apart as any writer will tell you. So I was looking for a way to reengage with my next Night Stalkers novel (coming in October).

And then I look at another upcoming release. On October 14th, by first "Ides of Matt" short story collection will become available (you can pre-order the electronic now, paper available on release day). I think about this collection a lot when I'm having trouble writing. There are some really wonderful stories in here that I don't know how I ever found them in the world of the blank page. There are others that I think of as simply "good stories." They work and I'm glad that I wrote them, but they don't have the Snap! of one that really clicked. Yet as I was writing the introduction to each story, I remembered how much fun it was to write that particular tale. Every time I so enjoyed the experience of discovery of character and story.

That's the secret I've discovered about how to react to the good reviews and the bad. It extends into everyday life as I contemplate the good news and the bad as well.

Follow the fun!

I love every tale mentioned on this page and on my website. I had so much fun writing the two short stories that went up this month on my website (one was free on my site--no longer but it's still for sale, the other one is still free to newsletter subscribers or for purchase). And I love the Night Stalkers book that will be coming out in October though it has neither cover nor title yet making it hard to promote,

I love writing!

It gives me something to be thankful for every day. And if I focus on that instead of reviews, accolades, stray comments, and other distractions, then I can dodge the "Danger of the Good" (or the Bad) and keep doing what I love most: Telling Stories.
---

M. L. Buchman has over 40 novels in print. His military romantic suspense books have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the Year,” nominated for the Reviewer’s Choice Award for “Top 10 Romantic Suspense of 2014” by RT Book Reviews, and twice Booklist “Top 10 of the Year” placing two of his titles on their “The 101 Best Romance Novels of the Last 10 Years.” In addition to romance, he also writes thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction.

In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world.

He is now making his living as a full-time writer on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife. He is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing by subscribing to his newsletter at www.mlbuchman.com. 

How Not To Write A Short Story

by Wendy Clark

Thank you for joining me! Today I celebrate the half-year anniversary of my short story debut, “Fatty Patty.” It’s about a now thin girl who returns to her five-year high school reunion to get revenge on the classmates who tortured her and on the boy who broke her heart. As the first in my soon-to-be released anthology of San Juan Island Stories, it’s currently free on Amazon, BN, Google Play, and Smashwords. Check it out!

I used to think I couldn’t write short. Like the 7-minute mile and two-finger whistle, short stories were utterly beyond me. They belonged to Mark Twain, Eudora Welty, and other masters filling my English syllabi. I couldn’t make anyone laugh or sigh in a few sentences no matter how desperately I tried.

Every time I penned a simple boy-meets-girl story, the girl morphed into a supermodel astrophysicist and the boy revealed himself as a time-traveler out to steal her results , and to save the future from Nazis, they decided to start a rock band…wait, what happened to my simple sweet romance?

About that time I realized my true problem.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t write a short story.

It turns out I couldn’t write a novel either.

After abandoning several epics that would make Gilgamesh nervous about his word count, I started examining the short stories I loved. One of my favorite manga (Japanese comics) begins with a man gazing on his sleeping love as he murmurs, “My relationship…I’ve decided to end it today.”

 

The entire story – how they met, how they misunderstood, how they persevered anyway, how they overcame the misunderstanding – is told in a mere 30 pages, most of it long image shots of Tokyo, and with a minimum of dialogue. It’s gorgeous, compelling, and most importantly, it has a happy ending I can believe in.

Thanks to studying this and other examples, I became hooked on retelling short romantic stories. Because the most painful experience of first love I can remember is high school, I gave my characters their second chances during a high school reunion.

At about the same time I righted my writing wrongs, two monumental events shifted my life:

After 12 years of planning, my boyfriend convinced me to stop putting off my travel dreams and scheduled a fantastic trip to the gorgeous San Juan Islands. We kayaked, spotted bald eagles, explored hand-crafted pottery, savored pine rum chocolates, and slept in a cabin made from the shell of an old boat. This became the setting for my San Juan Island Stories.

Second, I ran my first race. I ran less than five miles and finished in six thousandth place (#6190 actually). A few months later, after the release of my third short story, I ran over six miles and finished twenty percent faster. I’m not at a 7-minute mile. (Yet.) But I thought I couldn’t write a short story, either.

Maybe it’s time to practice my two-finger whistle.

How about you? What impossible task amazed you when you finally conquered it? Or what impossibility lies ahead, just waiting to be conquered?

BIO

Wendy Lynn Clark is an award-winning author of romance, young adult, and science fiction. Her San Juan Island Stories are light, sweet romances perfect for a Pacific Northwest summer day. Sign up for free stories and exclusive updates at http://www.wendylynnclark.com/.

What Inspires a Short Story?

by Kelly McCrady

 

I have an author friend—with whom I just published a co-written novel (Canyon Hearts)—who has concluded she is more of a "long" writer than a "short" writer. She has a handful of successful short stories that serve as companion pieces to her Echo Falls series of novels, but she published one novella that no matter what she did to it, the manuscript kept growing. Readers have complained about it feeling unfinished, and she agrees, but was unsure what the solution might be.

As her editor, as well as coauthor, I find the issue to lie with that particular story, not her skill level as a writer. She and I put our heads together and decided rather than "unfinished," it was "unbegun" instead. Her characters gave her a view on their black moment first, and she constructed the story from that point forward. Now she is keen on the idea of delving back into their immediate past to show what led up to that moment. Most importantly, she plans to show it as real-time action on stage, rather than reliance on flashback to tell backstory, which is a common problem among less experienced writers. Her refusal to use such an amateur device is likely the culprit for this story's structure issues to begin with, as her characters are stubborn, prideful people and *insisted* she begin where they had their biggest strife. Now that they've had their moment in the spotlight, she can whip them into shape and tell their story properly. Some characters are like that.

Writers learn the basic structure of narrative, with inciting incident, rising action, climax, and descending action to the conclusion. This structure holds true over both long stories and short. The climax of a romance, often directly after the "black moment" in a relationship, is usually placed around ¾ of the way into the manuscript.

When a short story romance occurs to me, it is often at the moment the hero and heroine meet. I'll see a scene such as the opening to my latest short story, Hearts in Bloom, where the heroine is minding her business (ordinary world) and another woman complains to her about a man who strikes the heroine as extraordinary, and someone she wants to meet. Or the hero might enter the picture later, such as in my first short story Sweet Cicely, where at the end of a very long, "off" day for my heroine, the hero rescues her from her own klutziness.

 

 

 

In my second short story, Martial Hearts, the hero and heroine already know each other as teacher and student, but she needs to devise a way to see him alone, to learn whether she has a chance at being more to him than a student.

Writing short means to focus on one plot, one character (or couple), one conflict. In reality, people are more complicated. The joy of writing and reading a short story is to have a moment with as few complications as possible. In a romance, I like to conclude the short story when the protagonist decides to set herself free to love and be loved, to risk the pain and toss caution aside. Yes, there is much more to the story, but I leave their future to the reader's imagination.

_________________________________

Kelly McCrady grew up with two passions: animals and writing. She enjoys campfires, hiking in Cascade Mountain streams, and playing with her microscope. Kelly lives in Western Oregon with her husband, daughter, and golden retriever.

Please visit her author blog and her website at kellymccrady.com

Overheard on . . . Romancing the Genres

“A toast- To a romance that lasts longer than the best wine.”

Deep, intense, robust, delicate, full-bodied… these are all terms used to describe wine. Of course there is also, woodsy, fruity, earthy- but we won’t get into that in this post. Because what I have been thinking about lately is how the relationships we have with other things in our life can also be used to describe our romances.

… Such as our relationship with our home: comfy, cozy, grounding, nostalgic- or our school alma mater: loyal, supportive, gratifying, proud.

Even the form a story takes can be used to describe a relationship. Is it long and slow and deep, or short and fast and intense. Interestingly, either of these types of stories can be just as fulfilling to read, just as either type of romance can be filled with meaning and purpose.

The very best short story authors know this and develop the characters and their relationship in a way that leaves the reader better off for  knowing them.

During the month of March Romancing the Genres gets to spotlight some of these fantastic short story romance authors.
03/01 - Sarina Dorie
03/08 - Books To Go Now
03/15 - Sarah Raplee & Judith Ashley
03/16 - Kelly McCrady
03/22 - Jennifer Conner
03/29 - Wendy Clark

I’m intrigued by how at different times in my life I have been more interested in the short version of things, whether it is in my relationships or my reading choices. Looking at these periods I see that the two things have often balanced each other… so that when I was younger and just having fun dating, my reading choices tended to be bigger, longer romances, such as Anna Karenina. And now, enjoying and appreciating my own 15 year romance with my husband, I tend toward shorter, quirkier, more intense stories; even as condensed as a really great love poem.

And, while reading both short and long romances at the same time can be considered a talent, conducting short and long romances at the same time should be discouraged. Whichever you choose, though, here's to you own short or long journeys inspired by love.

Cheers,
Deanne Wilsted
www.deannewilsted.com

Short Stories Make Western Duets by Paty Jager

Not only is the reading public liking short stories but I've found I enjoy writing short stories. When I first started writing, I struggled to get enough words for the historical westerns I wrote. The first two had a lot of unnecessary scenes because I was trying to make them long enough. Eventually I learned about Goals, Motivation, and Conflict. Once those entered the equation, my books started filling out and becoming the proper length for novels.

Then along come Judith and Sarah asking me to be part of this group blog and eventually the Free Reads blog. The first couple of Free Reads I wrote for the blog went over the required word limit and I had to put the rest of the story on my own blog. Now, I'm better at coming up with and writing a short story.

And then what do I do? I am now adding/lengthening the Free Reads I've written for the Genre-ista blog and ones that I had as free reads on my blog or website and packaging them as Western Duets. Volume One came out earlier in the year with Shanghaied Heart and Last Stand for Love. 

Last week I released Volume Two: Heart of Gold and Fireworks and Fancies. Heart of Gold is a Valentine Story I started on the Genrista's free read blog and finished on my blog. It has been enhanced from the original story.  Fireworks and Fancies was a free read through Wild Rose Press and is a short story about a secondary character in my book Doctor in Petticoats.  The story was lengthened and more emotion was added. The original had to be a certain lenght. Now that I don't have any length restrictions, I can add in elements that were left out before due to the requirements.

Here is the blurb and cover for Western Duets- Volume Two

A novella with two short historical western romance stories

Heart of Gold

A mysterious valentine and a missing child bring school marm Jenny Wolcott and Sheriff Evan Carey together, however a father hell-bent on teaching the town and his young son a lesson threatens to keep them apart—forever.

Fireworks and Fancies

As a Judge’s daughter, Celeste Tarkiel is politically savvy, and more than slightly impressed with Representative Jeremiah Folsum. She’d tell him so, too, if he ever quit avoiding her.

The way Celeste flirts rankles Jeremiah. Yet, her keen mind and beauty holds his interest—perhaps too deeply. Especially, when he learns another man is prepared to ask for her hand in marriage.

Buy links: Kindle    Windtree Press  Nook  Kobo 

Award winning author Paty Jager is a member of national and local writing organizations. She not only writes the western lifestyle she lives it. With fifteen novels and several short stories published, she continues to have characters cavorting in her head . 

You can learn more about Paty at her blog; www.patyjager.blogspot.com  her website; http://www.patyjager.net or on Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/#!/paty.jager , Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1005334.Paty_Jager  and twitter;  @patyjag. 

Free Reads - Short Stories

From an author’s perspective a Free Read is a promotional item. Like the free food samples at grocery stores, given a taste readers will (the author hopes) like the product and want more!

For readers, a Free Read provides the opportunity to discover a new author, sample the writing style prior to a buying decision, or spend more time with favorite characters.

Excerpts are one type of Free Read. As well, there are several free short story approaches to entice readers to put an author’s books on their “to read” lists, including but not limited to the following:

1.    Promote Author’s Voice and Brand

The way authors tell stories is as individual as their personalities. Are the stories light and humorous or gritty and dark? Fast-moving or descriptive? Whether authors write hot, kinky romance or high tension romantic suspense, their free short reads “brand” them as writers in a particular genre. When readers search review sites, the bookshelves at a book store or online book sellers such as Amazon, they’ll expect to find books in the same “voice” and genre that authors promote in the free short stories.

2.    Frame a Series

My free short story The Next Big Thing describes how Angela meets her match but also introduces the heroines of my next two novels: sister Sophie (For Love and Money - romantic suspense) and cousin Lucy (The Lust Factor - romantic comedy). The short story is a frame linking very different tales of three beautiful women who happen to be related.

I wish from the bottom of my heart that those two books were already written and published because it is asking a lot of a reader to wait that long. Lesson learned. When planning a series, authors may consider writing a short story that introduces linked characters. So as not to frustrate readers, they should publish the Free Read only when the first book in the series is available!

3.    Hook with a Prequel

Genre fiction does not allow for detailed backstory. However, many readers are keen to know more about the hero or heroine’s journey to that point.

Consider this example. An author would love to describe the incident years ago when the hero saved his sister from a murderous demon but was left emotionally and physically scarred, knowing the next encounter with the demon would kill him. However, the editor nixes the flashback, and the book opens when the same demon targets the heroine. A Free Read ‘extra’ can provide details of characters' pasts that the author had to cut; i.e., a deleted prologue or flashback scene is converted into a short free read.

4.    Satisfy With a Sequel

Romance readers follow the characters’ trials and tribulations for hours, only to be left at the altar, so to speak. In a short story an author can give readers proof there really is a happily ever after. At the wedding of the hero and heroine does the best man get together with the caterer? Does the bride’s sister fall for the groom’s out-of town college roommate? There may not be enough spin-off story for a full-length novel, but a short sequel gives readers a few more minutes with favorite characters while providing a satisfying story complete in itself.

What type of Free Read do you enjoy most?

Madelle’s Free Read, The Next Big Thing, was downloaded over 100,000 times and won a 'Superstar' award at Ellora’s Cave RomantiCon 2010.