Short Story "The Hunt for Cimmoarid" Begins
...and when it is done, "Swords Against Bastards" is ready for the final editing phase
With the main story for Barbarians of the Storm, Book III - Swords Against Bastards coming to an end yesterday, there is only one thing left to do, the short story for the end of the book.
While the main plot is long enough on its own and I thought about omitting a short this time, the short stories have sort of become tradition and I’m a guy that likes tradition. Also, my short stories add a lot of context to characters, their relationships, and the overall mythos. If you’ve read Eyes in All Shadows & Other Stories, you are probably well aware of this by now.
My mind has been all over the place in regards to which short story to put in the next book. However, I settled on The Hunt for Cimmoarid, as it adds more to the Fenrik and Vasilia relationship, gives more time to Captain Agos, and involves the actual hunt for the great sand dragon Cimmoarid, a monster that Vasilia was already hunting down before the events of her previous short story, A Tale of Three Evils from Eyes in All Shadows & Other Stories. Additionally, there is a reason why I want to introduce Cimmoarid now, as it helps to set up something I have mapped out going into 2023’s planned books.
The nearly handful of other short stories I toyed around with are also going to be written in the very near future. I have talked about going into the new year with a monetization option on Substack. For subscribers, I want to release exclusive early content. So, I am thinking about releasing weekly chapters for short stories that will eventually be published in book form, but will probably only exist on Substack for months (or longer) before appearing elsewhere.
In another post I’ll discuss what I’m thinking for that first subscriber only story. However, before making that move, I want to have stuff written well ahead of schedule. I’ll also outline what options I’m looking at and take feedback from potential subs on what they’d like to see first. But again, more on that later.
Getting back to Book III, I should be able to knock out this short story in a few days. Once it is done, I have to go through the final proofing and editing process for the book as a complete body of work. This involves proofing it in multiple formats, as different formats and presentations allow me to catch different errors that need to be fixed. Usually, this process only takes me about a week.
That’s it for now. I need to take some time out to go over my plot points for The Hunt for Cimmoarid and massage them into something more concrete. There are a few details I still need to figure out.