Serially Me

Introduction

This community's mission statement says it is for serialized storytelling, you can read about it here. I have seen a post that there is no lower limit for word counts in the new Vocal communities, but my first one topped seven hundred words so that was fine. This one might be shorter.

Because of my complete indiscipline in writing, I could never commit to a serial on Vocal, although due to audience demand, I have created a few mini-series. having written that I thought what is the plural of series? It turns out that the word series is a "zero plural" meaning it is both singular and plural (so shouldn't that be a "multiple plural"?) but whatever, I am wandering off track.

So on this, I am going to share a couple of first stories in series that I have written. All of these were continued by audience demand as when I write I often want readers to use their minds to draw their own conclusions, which means that a story might have a million different endings depending on who is reading it.

So Here Is Where They Start

This was for the Vocal Foggy Waters Challenge. I had meant it as a standalone piece but people asked me the classic question "What happens next?" and of course, I took the bait, but then managed to weave it into a three-way circular story just to stop people asking for more, but I thought it was quite a clever construct that served its purpose for me.

My fiction has tended to be towards horror and dystopia and I have had conversations on how difficult it is to write something totally positive. We seem to crave adversity and jeopardy, maybe that is part of the human condition.

My first attempt to break out of this turned out to be a six-part series (that may still continue and become a published book) which was influenced by Paul Gallico's "Snow Goose" and the film "Local Hero". It was meant to be a single stand-alone story but my friend Mariann cajoled me into following it up.

This was an entry for a Vocal Fantasy Prologue, people asked for a follow-up to it but I never got around to it, but who knows I may come back and write a chapter two.

This is a series of connected horror stories that started with an idea that I was then pushed to take up by my friend Julie

and coincided with the Vocal "Candle In The Window" challenge. All the stories are linked so you can see how this developed into its own mini-series.

This was another two-parter for the Vocal "Christopher Paolini's Fantasy Fiction Challenge" that could be continued, although I do feel that I do not write fantasy very well but a lot of people did like it.

I know this community is for "works in progress" but as I said at the beginning I do not think I could commit to a series as it would feel too much like a job to me.

And Then The Poetry

At the prompt of my friend Dharrsheena I wrote some Dark Poetry, this resulted in fifty themed poems that were then collected in an anthology.

This was the first in the series

And this is the anthology that resulted and is selling well on Amazon

I will leave you with the introduction to my Plagiaristic Poetry series which is ongoing with a published anthology escaping at some point. Of course, these poems will be in the Poets community but are just as much a series as the stories that will appear here. I have a feeling that my fiction will also stay in the Vocal Fiction community.

Thank you so much for your time.