Looking Ahead to "Fenrik Fucks", Which I Probably Won't Title His First Short Story Anthology
While I’m working on the second book in the Barbarians of the Storm series, I’ve already mapped out the first short story anthology, which is focused primarily on Fenrik tales that happened before Dan the Destructor.
It will also be the first of at least two Fenrik-centric books, as I have several other ideas I want to do in a second volume. Beyond that, there is also going to be at least one book centered around Frank Murdock, as well as another one that’s broader and features several different characters. Additionally, I’d like to do a villain book, since there are so many already and they’re fun to write and probably deserve to have their origins told.
The gist of the stories in the first Fenrik book are things that are casually mentioned in Dan the Destructor. Part of that book saw him have to fight a few enemies from his past, so I want to go back and show how those rivalries began. I also want to tell the stories of the first time Fenrik met the other core characters he already knew by the time of Dan the Destructor, such as Frank, Erzulyn, Cynthania, and Vasilia.
There are some other wholly original stories I want to tell that don’t directly connect to the events or people in Dan the Destructor, but those will probably end up in the second short story book. One, in particular, deals with his origin and family.
A few of my friends and I have been referring to Fenrik’s first book as Fenrik Fucks, but that’s probably not going to be the title, simply because it’s hard to market and because there’s a goofy trend of adding profanity to titles in an effort to sell low-tier self-help books.
Also, it’s been brought to my attention by a few readers that they’ve passed Dan the Destructor on to their high school kids, which is partly neat and partly concerning due to some of the content of the book - mainly, language, sexual innuendo and The Forging of Foolpuddle short story, which is frankly, the darkest thing I’ve ever published.
Then again, when I was in high school, I had already seen just about every R-rated movie that came out of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Granted, kids are coddled and scared of everything these days, so I’m never sure what’s “too much” for them.
I’m probably going to work on some of these Fenrik stories while I’m also working on the second book in the main series. When I get to a point in the second book where I’m stuck or I need time to think about the plot, I may switch gears. This always helps me keep the creativity flowing and I’ve worked in a creative field where I’ve had to bounce around on multiple projects for nearly two decades now. So my brain just works this way, even though I know a lot of creatives prefer the opposite.