Monday, May 4, 2015

The long and short of it

I've started dozens of short stories. I mean, years ago. When I subbed my first story to an online publisher in 2008, I drew from this great big well of stories. Then I subbed about thirteen more, and ended up with 14 acceptances my first year.

Eventually, as computers died and went to PC Nirvana, I lost track of those stories. I'd backed up my files onto floppies and discs, but basically forgot about them. But many of them have been calling to me lately, beckoning me to come back and finish them, already.

Out of curiosity, I searched for one that had been begging louder than the others. I thought I had copies of them all on my laptop, which is years old (knock wood! Please don't die on me, laptop).

But none were there except the ones that had gone on to publication. Arrggh! So I rifled through all the old floppies and CDs. I found a bunch of floppies that looked promising, but after the last PC died, I disconnected the external floppy drive. After more digging in the closet, I found it *whew* and it still worked! *double whew*

Needless to say, I copied all those stories onto my desktop and onto my old but trusty flash drive that's currently holding way more than I thought it could (knock wood again! Please don't die on me, flash drive).

So I polished up the one story that had been nagging me most, and posted it on Wattpad. If you'd like to read it, you can find it here. And as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. And you don't need an account to read stories there - just bypass the screen that pops up.

Maybe it's because May is Short Story Month, though I didn't learn that until yesterday. I do love a good short story, don't you?