It's Out. My First Story is Live.
There's been a lot happening since my last posts about Jerry.
A lot of writing. A lot of editing. Holy shit, the editing.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The big news first:
I have self-published a story by casting it into the endless void that is Amazon KDP!
The Lightless Moon and the Starfall Horror is out now as an ebook on Amazon, available on Kindle Unlimited.
It's a dark fantasy short-read — the first in what I'm intending to be the Lightless Moon series. Like the sword and sorcery tales and pulp fiction that inspired it, the adventures are standalone. An entry might drop you early in the mercenary crew's career, much later, or even into an origin story. There's some chronology underneath it all, but the goal is that you can pick up any story, any time, and just enjoy it.
This one drops you right in the middle of the crew's career, in the frontier town of Brightlantern on a forgotten continent — a place of intrigue and danger during an age of rediscovery. Of course, perhaps it's better if some things are left lost.
It was a lot of fun to write. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Share it with your friends, your family — and leave an honest review. My mom isn't allowed to do that. I warned her.
What Else Has Been Happening
Since Jerry, there have been three more Writing Battle competitions. I've done all of them with varying degrees of success.
One, like Jerry, made it to the Final Showdown in Tempest Raven tournament — and went one round further than Jerry did. The next was a longer short story for the Verdant Owl battle, 2,500 words, professionally judged. I loved it. I mean I really enjoyed writing it, and I like the characters I made.
The judges did not like it. It didn't make the Final Showdown. Didn't even get an honorable mention. I was bummed about that, but it came back with good feedback, so I'll take it.
The most recent (Verdant Raven) was a 250-word micro fiction. Which I had never done before. It was surprisingly difficult to be that concise. This one also didn't make the Final Showdown, but it did get an Honorable Mention — which felt like a win after the last result.
One More Thing
Shortly after those micro fiction results came in, there was an open call for micro fiction from an online publication that mainly deals with strange little stories that perhaps don't fit in with other places. And for the first time, I decided "why not?" and submitted the "Verdant Raven" story for consideration.
Now there's an "up to 60 days" waiting game to find out if it's accepted or rejected. I've never had a rejection letter. I'm told you're not really doing this "writing thing" properly until your pillow is stuffed with them and you can rest your head upon a pile of broken dreams.
Fingers crossed.
Oh, and don't forget about LIghtless Moon and the Starfall Horror. That's repetition, kids. I gotta make it stick in your head.