As a freelance writer, I’ve had many short stories published over the years, mostly in UK magazines, a few in anthologies, and a couple in a US magazine. I’ve also won a few prizes. But once all of these stories were published, they were left languishing in the archives while I wrote some more stories and progressed to novels.
Then the e-publishing phenomenon arrived and a few of my writing friends began to put their novels on to Kindle, very successfully. When my first novel was published as an e-book in May (as Romy Gemmell, through Champagne Books), I experienced the joy of reading my work on my kindle. When one of my friends, Chris, gave our writing forum the detailed instructions for putting work on to Amazon, I decided to give it a go in a smaller way!
The resulting experiment, Reshaping the Past, is a small collection of eight of my previously published short stories. I designed the cover from a single photograph I had taken of a rose. I used the title of the final story for the collection, as it sums up the collection as a whole and was the story published in the fund-raising 100 Stories for Haiti anthology last year. The subtitle, Short Stories of Love and Relationships, is to give an indication of the contents.
In no particular order, there is a prize-winning story about a teenager who has to face the consequences of her actions; a woman confronting her past; a troubled man who begins learning to love again; a girl who seeks answers from a painting; a man who accepts the changes of the past, and two lighthearted romantic stories.
The whole process was time-consuming, but the instructions Chris had provided made it all work relatively smoothly. And it was fun! It is now available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. I might think about another collection in the future, but only for my stories that have been in magazines. I can’t help thinking it’s a better use for my published stories than lying forgotten in the archives!
Rosemary Gemmell
http://www.rosemarygemmell.com/
http://ros-readingandwriting.blogspot.com/
http://romygemmell.blogspot.com/
Welcome to Lindsay's Romantics, where we post on all kinds of romance topics.
5 comments:
Welcome to the pink blog, Rosemary! I wish you much success with your re-issued short stories - as you say, much more interesting and profitable than having them languish!
As a way of reaching new and old readers, I think amazon kindle and Smashwords are certainly ways to go.
Hi Lindsay - thanks again for having me here. Just home from buying the final bits and pieces for son's wedding on Friday!
Hi Rosemary. I'm glad you put your stories up as ebooks. I think it's sad when a book goes out of print and you can't find it anymore. And I love your cover.
Rosemary, great idea. Why let them languish? That is the beauty of digital right now. Out there for the world to see. I wish you every success.
Hello Linda - thanks a lot for your kind comment about the cover!
Hi Savanna - thank you so much for your good wishes!
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