Let's get it on!

I just launched my new author site and I'm as excited as...

...well, I'm just really excited. I'm kicking off the new website by tracing back to the most recent (and still current) project I'm working on: the September Stories!

For those who are just joining us, my September Stories project started off with a simple idea: I'd write a short story every day in September based off volunteers' answers to specific criteria: a name, a color, an adjective, and a genre. From those answers, stories were born! (Except that some of them were late-bloomers and an unexpected injury caused this project to creep into October...but I digress.) So that I could turn around a story a day, I tried to keep the hour maximum to 24 hours per story, and I (mostly) was able to make that happen.

Some of the answers were really cool. I got names like Quackerbottom and Horatio Aloysius Quisenberry. Some names were the names of folks' kids and some were just simple one name ideas. The colors got interesting (persimmon) and sometimes oddly specific (khaki, seafoam green), and the adjectives were fun (e.g. copious, tenacious, quixotic). But the genres were the most challenging part. I got everything from mystery to satire to time travel romance. It was a HUGE challenge to try and meet the letter of those rules.

But, you guys, it was SO SO FUN.

And the stories that came out of it were incredible. Some got published by reputable journals or in anthologies. Others sat never to be seen by anyone else's eyes other than the ones who requested them. I got some feedback from people--usually good--but for the most, it was silent. And I kinda liked that. It was like me and this other person shared a secret in a dark room and neither of us needed to use words to address it. Other than the story, obvs.

It was magical.

My one regret was that I didn't finish. I got overcome by events in life and I still had 8 left to finish. Sure, you might say, but why not go ahead now, even though September is over? It's not quite so easy; the next one I was due to write was for my Dad and he died before I got to it. He never knew he was next on my list.

Will I do it again? Maybe. It was a fun project and I got a lot out of it. I grew as a writer and got to try out some techniques that I maybe wouldn't have let myself try in a project I was trying to get published. Some of those techniques worked, others didn't. But it was a learning experience unlike any other.