I don’t write many short stories, although, at one time I used to write nothing else. These days, when I get a great idea for a short story, I find that, when I think about it, it could easily be expanded into a novel. It’s what happened with Mindrider – my “urban sci-fi” novel that I will be releasing in April this year. I actually wrote a short story and began subbing it to magazines before I suddenly realised that what I’d written was actually the first chapter of a really cool novel. So, I quickly withdrew it and started work on the book. It’s what happened with another novel I have partly written (working title, Metaman) which is based on an idea I had to explain the Fermi paradox. There was far too much I wanted to say, so the short became a long. (Metaman is on the back burner at the moment, I have so many other books I need to complete first!) And, most recently, I had a great short story idea about a man who sacrifices everything to give his daughter immortality – but, with a premise like that, come on, it just had to be a novel, right?

The only shorts I seem to be able to write these days are ones based in “worlds” I’ve already used for novels (I’ve done several short stories in my Timesplash universe and my Placid Point universe) although there is a werewolf story I plan to write when I get the time (don’t worry, it will be hard science fiction, my head would rather explode than let me write fantasy these days). I suppose I’m just a natural-born novelist. If I conceive of a great character, I want to explore their life. If I write about a theme, I want to delve into all its corners. Novels let you do this; shorts don’t.

Yet my fiction writing career (that period of my life in which I make up stuff and get paid for it) really began with short stories – and a piece of advice from SFF and crime writer, Marianne de Pierres. She said I should get a few short stories published because it would give me some credentials to brag about when I submitted novels to publishers, but also because it would give me what was, at the time, a much-needed boost in confidence. In a complete break with everything I hold holy, I actually took her advice. I began writing shorts and submitting them to magazines. (I didn’t have any shorts in my ‘bottom drawer’ at the time because almost all the stories I’d written before then had been lost in a traumatic relationship break-up and I’d never had the heart to write any more.)

Fortunately, I had immediate success and placed a few stories with magazines and anthologies. I even started winning short-story competitions, which was cool. I gathered some of these early stories, along with others, in my short story collection, The Future Below. You will find more in my Placid Point collection (which is free, by the way – I’ll even send you a copy if you sign up for my newsletter), and a couple of older stories are in my collection, Threefold.

The reason I’m waffling on about short stories is that I was recently asked to contribute a story to the Immerse or Die anthology, All These Shiny Worlds, and had to go through my available stories, looking for something suitable. I found I actually still like a lot of my old stories (and would love to turn some of them into novels! There’s one in The Future Below, called “Skyball” which is just begging for it) and I wish I had time to write some more. In fact, I wrote into this year’s business plan that I’d make the time to write a couple more – but we’ll see.

All These Shiny Worlds came out today and is available (for free or thereabouts) at your favourite online bookstore (e.g. Amazon.com, Kobo, etc.). It’s supposed to showcase the writing skills of some of today’s leading independent authors – so, that’s really flattering for a start! The “Immerse or Die” thing is about the editor’s personal philosophy on writing. He reads while he does his morning exercise. If, by the end of his treadmill session, the writing hasn’t got him thoroughly immersed, he ditches it for the next one on his to-be-read pile. Brutal. But it allows him to say, with a certain degree of honesty, in the blurb for All These Shiny Worlds, that the stories are “Guaranteed not to suck.”