Recently a fan commented that the Universe of Exodus could be the home to a great number of stories, which got me to thinking about how I started out, and how one of my favorite authors, Larry Niven, also started. I am really a novelist, I prefer the form that is most complicated, with numerous storylines and lots of characters. I did write quite a few short stories in my first couple of years of writing. I have them up at my website, free for the taking. I’m not sure how many people have actually looked at them. I do know that the Exodus series is doing well. Hopefully it will do even better in the future. I have a lot of ideas for the series, both for the main storyline, and for many spinoff novels that will cover some other aspect of the Galaxy and the war. It has also been suggested to me that I concentrate on Exodus to the exclusion of my other series, Refuge and The Deep Dark Well. I have enough readers in those series to keep them going. In fact, I really want to see them continue. So I have come up with a compromise that I think will at least partially satisfy everyone, as well as helping to grow the readership of this blog and visits to my website. Larry Niven also wrote a lot of novels, and a lot of short stories, some with the same characters as his novels, some with a different cast. I always loved the stories from Tales of Known Space and Neutron Star.
I have decided to write at least a short story a month set in the Exodus Universe, in one of three areas. The Dark Side, Tales of Hyperspace, and A Day In The Life. These short stories will be posted on my website, with links on the blog page to get to them. I will also give notice in my newsletter when a new one comes out. In this manner I hope to get more subscribers to the newsletter and the blog, and more visitors to the website. And I can keep putting out stories for those who are interested. Some will be short shorts, some novellas, and everything in between. They will be free for the downloading, or can be read at the site on your web browser. After enough of them have accumulated in one of the themes I will package them up and publish them as an ebook on Amazon.
I will also, over the next month, publish sketches and drawings from the Exodus Universe. Eventually I want to put some professional level art work of ships and other objects, but since people have asked me what the ships look like, or for a map of the Galaxy, I think this is a good compromise for now.