Last week, I shared one of my short stories for free, All the Pieces Coming Together. Next week, The Crow’s Gift and Other Tales will be released, which contains All the Pieces and three additional stories.

As I sit in the in-between, one week before and after a story release, I find myself both nervous and excited. I’ve written for many years, but I’ve never published anything before — none of my fiction, anyway. I did submit some poems to my high school’s literary journal, and I’m glad for both your sake and mine that there’s no online archive of the issue.

I also converted one of my short stories into a treatment for television for my Electronic Media Writing class at NC State. It was called The Wedding of Bianca West, and the story cross-cut between an innocuous wedding ceremony and an attack the week before on Bianca and her fiance. It’s revealed at the end that her fiance had been turned into a vampire, and their “ceremony” was him converting her into one too. Wildly original, I know; but we all start somewhere. My professor called it “creepy, but effective.”

None of the stories in The Crow’s Gift and Other Tales feature vampires, and I kept all of them in the present day (oh yeah, Bianca West was set in 19th century England, which I knew almost nothing about except for what I read in fiction. Research? Pish-posh, I had a vampire bride to create). However, it’s my hope that when you read the collection, that you find the stories both creepy and effective; and more so, that you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. I look forward to hearing what you think.

In the meantime, here’s one final reminder that you can read one of the stories, All the Pieces Coming Together, both now and for free. It’s available in EPUB (zip) and PDF (please bear in mind when you open it that pieces — heh — are NSFW). Thank you for reading!