It has always surprisedme how different an experience seems once you've done it. Beforehand there maybe trepidation or eager anticipation, all sorts of expectations and projectionsthat probably have nothing to do with the 'event' itself.

Possibly, the onlyexperiences I've gone into calmly - and positively - are speaking events. Onthose occasions I either have notes with enough space for me to get 'out of theway' when inspiration strikes, or else I am confident in my subject matter andtrusting of my audience to the point where I don’t use notes.

I recently completed a crimemystery, the third in a series. Buoyed up by that final rush to the creativefinishing line I thought I'd cross another leviathan off my list - a shortstory collection.

To share a masterclassin procrastination, I won the cover design for a planned anthology back in 2014, from https://www.goonwrite.com.

There were three reasonsfor putting off the endeavour:

1. I didn't think I hadenough stories.

2. I wasn't convincedthat those I had were good enough.

3. I thought it would bea lot of work.

When I went back throughmy folders and my trusty spreadsheet I found plenty of stories. Many of themhad been published elsewhere in other anthologies and on websites. Reading thosestories again, I recognised that the quality was patchy is some of them but each story was a memory in ink andan attempt to bring an idea to life. Sometimes I had written to order for acompetition. Other stories fell from the sky on to the page, like a gift fromthe Gods. Some were, frankly, hard work. One or two did not make the finallist.

It was a lot of work. It took ages toedit and proofread each story (with some very minor rewrites). Choosing anorder was an exquisite torture as well, trying to balance story length, genres,titles even, over the whole book. And now it's done, I have what I believe isthe best version of each of them (at time of writing!). They exist as acollection now, so there is no reason to rework them. I’ve set them free andthat has set me free to work on something else.

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FTT8X2B4

US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FTT8X2B4

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