A Very Special Project
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A Very Special Project
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"I would never advise a beginner to rewrite. He can learn more by starting a brand-new story and doing his best on it." Robert A. Heinlein
from a letter Heinlein wrote to Sprague de Camp in 1952, after de Camp asked for clarification on Heinlein's "rule 3", quoted in Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Volume 2 by William H. Patterson
A Very Special Project
Yesterday and probably through today I'm doing something I've never done before. I'm working to compile Special Edition, an expanded collection of short stories originally titled Six Years in May.
I originally published Six Years in May way back in 2011. It was even in paperback, but later, for various reasons, I unpublished it. The paper copy is out of print.
Now I'm bringing an expanded edition of that collection back to life.
I'm cycling back through it, allowing the characters to update every story. Then I'll add a new short story titled "Special Edition."
Special Edition will be an eclectic collection, unique in both the stories it contains and unique in the overall form of the collection itself.
While cycling, I made a couple of discoveries:
I noticed the stories are reminiscent of Harlan Ellison's stories, and
the form of the overall collection is in the style of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, the Finca Vigia edition.
At around 40,000 words, this Special Edition collection will rival most of my novels in length, and as I said above, it's also unique in its construction.
In addition to the fourteen stories the collection will contains, interspersed among the 'regular' short stories, a bonus, 15th story is delivered in vignettes presented as chapters.
Note: Revisiting older work is something I do NOT recommend unless you've put at least two million words of new fiction on the page. Until then, in my opinion, you aren't ready for an undertaking like this. It will be too easy to slip into critical mind and rewrite. But as always, you do you.
(If you're wondering, I'm at around six million new words of fiction and counting.)
Here's what's inside Special Edition:
Tales reminiscent of Harlan Ellison, ranging from the almost normal to the fantastic, from the tragic to the comedic, from the dark tale to the fairytale.
You'll encounter a mind cleaner who enters the mind of an angel. What will he find there? You'll climb aboard a bull with a rodeo cowboy who's beleaguered repeatedly by a black angus bull in the arena and a raven-haired woman in his dreams.
You’ll witness what happens when the one woman whom Giacomo Casanova has loved down through the ages works to bring him back to life, and you’ll read the story of a Death Valley hiker who encounters, and questions, God face to face.
You'll accompany a scriptwriter (and a scriptwriter's mind) as he makes his way over rough terrain through a nuclear holocaust, and you'll watch a storm chaser in Oklahoma as he remembers who, or what, he really is.
You'll share the frustrations of a rural boy who was forced into manhood by the death of his father, and watch as he'd tested to his limits. You'll learn the ground rules about all the frightening little things we don't generally admit to noticing at all.
You'll consider the morality of euthanasia and how you might one day pay the oldest debt, and you'll wade deeper into the moral morass with a cruel boy who loves to crush bugs, and the price that must be paid.
You'll also accompany a Cajun man on a single-minded mission into the backwoods of Louisiana, then witness a hell on future-Earth in "Six Days in May."
Then you'll relive the story of Little Red Riding Hood with a new, improved Red who believes in magic and in herself. All of that plus a brand-new short story titled "Special Edition."
Finally, as I wrote above, interspersed among the 14 regular short stories, an extra, 15th story is delivered in vignettes presented as chapters. That segmented final story is at once a short story, a recollection, a history, and a confession. It is truth and fiction, reality and fantasy. I'll let you choose which is which.
If you enjoy Harlan Ellison like stories written in the protagonist's own unique voice, you want Special Edition.
And for a limited time, you will be able to get Special Edition only from me—FREE—in your chosen electronic format: .pdf, .epub, or .mobi. Details coming in a day or two.
Hint: Support the True Pulp Kickstarter for $10 or more and save your receipt. (grin)
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Don’t Think Writing Into the Dark Works?
The What Ifs of Building Believable Alternate History
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 810
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXXX
Fiction for July..………………………. XXXX
Fiction for 2025………………………. 520807
Nonfiction for July………………....... 3010
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 154640
2025 consumable words…………….. 667833
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 13
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 30
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 117
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 300
Short story collections……………………. 29
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Sounds like a fun project!