As I’ve been doing my final read-thru and editing on the first chapter of The Wheel Of Fire (tentative title), I got to thinking about the short story I finished and whether or not I should start to stretch it out to be a novel or work the third Talia novel. While I’m going to try to sell it as a short story, there’s a lot of things that take place in 9k words and in some ways it feels rushed.

Would it make a good novel? There is the possibility of it being that, especially since the character isn’t such a “good girl” like my others have been. There’s no real redeeming qualities to her, but she’s still an interesting character. This is where I’d love to ask for opinions. Would people like to see me keep this short story as a short or work to stretch it out into a novel? I’m sure I could do so rather easily.

I’ll let you, my followers, help me decide that.

The last 24 hours have been particularly satisfying. I finished the final rewrite of my first novel and will now start the final edit and then prepare for submission. Today the short story I was working on at the same time was finished. For the first time in a while I’m happy because I’ve had the time to actually create. If there’s one part of writing that sucks, it’s the editing process. Yes, it’s the most important part but it’s such a stressing and boring thing when I’d rather be creating something instead.

Anyone who reads the short story will be both surprised that the main character is so unlikeable. In fact, she has few redeeming qualities, but it’s written and constructed in such a way that it can be stretched into a novel rather easily if I so choose. In fact, if I can get it published in a magazine, I will seek to retain the rights to any novelization of it. Another thing that separates it from other works I’ve done is that I leave the ending intentionally open. There’s no conclusive closure to the story, and that’s done intentionally. It allows the reader to make decisions for themselves about whether Athol has a future and reaches her destination. Also, it allows me to be able to write more stories about her if I so choose.

Talia, though, is also calling to me, trying to tell me there’s another adventure of hers to tell, so I really want to get the first novel polished and ready to go. All in all it’s been a pleasing twenty-four hours. Hopefully it’s been good to you too.