My Short Story Vibe/Idea Wars

I've now written and self-published three books of short stories. And I've written two e-books (one that's also in paperback) that have just two stories each, for a total of thirty short stories. One thing I've noticed is that my writing in each book seemed to have a different feeling to it for me. The first one was kind of a "testing the waters" vibe, the second felt like a confidence builder, and the third had an intense feeling to it that was perhaps intentional, since I wanted all the stories to be darker. 

That was the theme. My first book of short stories didn't really have a "theme" to it, I didn't feel like I needed one. For the second, I was working with the theme of stories about love, loss, and fate. Then I chose to focus on writing darker stories in the third one - giving it a little bit of a Gothic vibe. My two e-books have kind of a dark vibe also. 

With a dark story, I sometimes like to give it that happy ending that has just a little bit of a shadow hanging over it. I'm a sucker for a happy ending. I love it when the guy gets the girl. I like when the good guys win, but I think it strikes a chord of realism when they don't. So sometimes my dark stories don't even have that slightly happy ending.

I like the variety of writing different genres; I don't stick to one in particular.  I write whatever fanciful thing comes into my mind, and sometimes it matches my mood. I like to keep the reader in suspense, to keep them wondering, and to inject a little humor even in the saddest story.

I wrote the first version of my story "All The Things I Meant To Be" years ago at a time in my life when I'd lost a job and was feeling down and trying to get myself together. I just felt like writing a sad story, though even back then I put a little humor in it. I had two characters who were brothers, and I wanted to have a scene where they were laughing and having fun together after a recent reconciliation. I also knew right away I wanted this to be a contemporary fiction story.

Sometimes the genre I write and the era in which the story takes place are both determined by the characters I create. I have to be able to fit the character into that genre and time. I have to be able to envision them there. Sometimes there may even be a battle between the story details in my imagination.

For example, I created a character named Clotilde. I think it's such a beautiful name. I gave her the name before I even put together her story. I thought of her being in the past, and I knew I wanted her to be in a love story. Then I was struggling to decide how far back in the past to have her living in, and where to set the story. I kind of wanted her to be living a few hundred years ago in Europe, but she ended up being a divorced woman in the Deep South in 1950, and the story became a love story/mystery.

I would love to write a novel based on one of my short stories so I could delve more into the life of one of my characters. For now, my goal is to write a group of short mystery stories. I'm also planning a sequel/prequel to my story, "Skeletons of Bellwood". 

A little erratic. A little eccentric. Emotional ups and downs. That's my writing vibe.