A New Story

I have written a short story.

This is kind of weird for me. I used to write lots of short stories, and I published maybe 17 or so of them before I decided to switch to writing novels, and then I stopped on the short stories altogether. In fact, I’m struggling to think when I last wrote a short story.

According to my website (which is the source of all wisdom), the last short story I published was in June 2011. It was a fairly short piece called The Equation and I wrote it all in one go on Christmas Eve in 2010 as a Christmas present for Steph. I wracking my brain, but I really think that was the last short story I wrote.

However, with SECRETS OF THE DRAGON TOMB due to be published in January 2016, I figured it might be nice to write a tie-in short story as an introduction to the world or as something for people who liked the book to read. And also because, you know, writing a novel is such an enormous job that sometimes I need a break.

I made an attempt a couple of months ago, but the story got carried away and turned into a novelette, called The Dinosaur Hunters, which I will revise and try to publish (or self-publish), but I still wanted to do a short story.

And today I finished it. It’s just under 5,000 words on first draft, so it is definitely a short story this time around, and it’s called The Bad Guys. SECRETS OF THE DRAGON TOMB is a middle grade novel, but The Bad Guys is definitely an adult story, not least because it has *whispers* rude words in it.

Anyhow, the next thing to figure out is whether it’s actually any good. I’m rusty at the short story game. I’m just hoping I haven’t completely forgotten how. Wish me luck!