Here, a successful author shares how she has used short stories effectively. Series authors may be interested in the comments section, as I specifically asked how she handles short stories with her series (the answer surprised me, and the more I think about it, the more her strategy makes sense). Every author is unique, but it’s always helpful to study ideas that work for some authors.
I am the last author you would think would be writing short stories. As a writer who tends to be prolix, the short form wouldn’t seem a good match for me. I don’t write anything short––not emails, not blog posts, not books. Twitter, forget it––the most I can do is retweet those of you who are good at being succinct. I don’t even read many short stories, (except by 19th century writers like Alcott, Wharton, and James).
Yet, this spring I took time off from doing the research for Deadly Proof, the next book in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, to write my third and fourth short stories, which are now part of a collection, Victorian San Francisco Stories, that I just published on Kindle, and I have every intention of putting out more short stories in the coming year.
So what happened?
Dandy Detects, my…
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chrismcmullen 