Doug BrotherofCats Dandridge

The last two months I have put up short stories set in the Exodus Universe for fans who can’t wait for the next book. The first, put out at the end of June on the Website, was the story of how Cornelius Walborski came to Sestius, titled A New Life. At 10,000 words it was a long short. At the end of July I added a story about Lucille Yu and The Other Universe Project titled What’s Eating You. I have blogged and tweeted both of the release dates, but really have no idea how many people have visited those pages. I will be putting up another before going to DragonCon. The stories can be read on the web page itself, or downloaded in Kindle, Word or PDF format. The plan is to keep putting them up every month, until there are enough of them to put in a volume to publish.
Today, while attending a committee meeting for the Tallahassee Writer’s Conference, the idea was brought up about putting short stories on blogs as a way of rewarding readers. I thought that was a great idea, and one that has the potential to grow a blog. So starting Monday I will be blogging my short stories, with links to the website. Since they are long, I will probably put each story out in three or four segments, published on different days, much like the old serials that used to play before the movies. For those who want to read them on the blog, they can get the entire story over a two week period. For those who can’t wait, they can go to the website and pick up the whole story. I will also be doing this for some of my other series, like Refuge and The Deep Dark Well, in the hopes of attracting more people to my work. I may also put the first twenty thousand words of novels out, giving people the chance to see far enough into the book so they can determine if its something they want to read. This is another experiment, something being an independent author allows me to do. So next blog out will be the first one in this experiment. Hope you will take the time to read it.