So I’ve been meaning to put up something about this for a while now and have finally found the time and the words to do it justice. So good people of the internet, lend me your ears!
For those of you that have read the beginnings of my short story series, “The Dead Letters”, you might have noticed that the stories aren’t connected. Other than being set in the same fantasy world that is. The reason for that is that it allowed me to tackle two problems at once.
- The first being what trips up a lot of aspiring writers. Backlog. I did a massive amount of research on the people who have succeeded at self publishing in my genre and one of the biggest things they say helped them was having a lot of work all out at once. One didn’t even publish the first book until he had three ready to go and I decided to go that route myself. I can’t really attest to the validity of that being helpful as of yet since sales haven’t really blown the doors off but that was expected. The first year is the hardest after all.
- This for me is the big one. World building. I have spent years and years building up Tearra and have a thousand little stories that I made up for the history of the place. Now weaving them through a long narrative would have been just as possible but giving those stories their own legs to stand on, to me, felt right. It lets me go into details about events that shape a lot of peoples view points and understandings of the world. That’s what legends and folklore do after all, act as dogma for those belief systems, those superstitions.
Now that isn’t to say longer, more connected works aren’t in the pipeline. In fact I’m working on a trilogy about werewolves that really shows how strange the connections with the gods can be. (they rarely interact with the mortal world but when they do it fundamentally changes the whole world)
There will be more to come but for tonight, stay frosty out there.