Category: work in progress

Karma and Summary Justice

On By TomIn Achievement, author ideas, beta readers, collections, Competitions, editing, General, Insight, Novel, Promotion, reading, self-publishing, series, Short Stories, thriller, work in progress, writing

Harriet: and other stories is now available. You’ll find more of my brand of karma and summary justice within. This is my first anthology for four years.

Three of the tales were written for this collection, and nine were created over the past three years for the regular 1,000-word challenge in Connections eMagazine. Fellow author Melanie P. Smith produces the quarterly digital publication. Each edition has short stories, new releases, special features, and author profiles.

This is the eighth collection of short stories I’ve published featuring only my work, and with my collaboration anthologies, it’s my eleventh collection to date. (Not including erotica).

I aim to publish Another Taste of Honey during December. The manuscript is now in the hands of my beta readers, so when their reports are returned to me, I’ll work through their comments and suggestions, followed by a final punctuation and grammar check.

This sequel has been a long time coming, and I want it to be received as well as the first part of the heroine’s story, A Taste of Honey.

As always, thank you for dropping by, and for any comments.

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The Retail Years

On By TomIn Achievement, author honesty, author ideas, collections, General, Insight, military career, Novel, reading, self-publishing, series, Short Stories, thriller, Unofficial autobiography, work in progress, writing2 Comments

Having now written books on various topics, it occurred to me recently that I’ve often referred to my time in retail and said, ‘I could write a book about it.’ It was, after all, my second career, which is why I’ve already used A Life of Choice as the title, with The Retail Years as a sub-title.

In less time than it took to drink a cup of coffee, I recalled the handful of companies I worked for, and each was different. Within the hour, I was strolling through the nearby woodland, my favourite place to free up my imagination. An abundance of anecdotes surfaced for each company.

Considering such a story is one thing, but would it a viable project?

My job title changed as I moved from one company to another, and with each title came authority and responsibilities. During my 23-year military career, I was no stranger to such things, and, of course, I understood organisation and the need for an established hierarchy. As much as I tried, nothing could have prepared me for the reality of working in ‘Civvy Street’.

Over the coming weeks I’ll create a framework for the story, and while it may cover a similar length of time to my military career, it will be compiled as one, or at most, two, volumes. The content will cover such things as Training, Customer Service, Staff Training, Discipline and the occasional foray into company and workplace politics.

The preparation will be my background project while I continue to work on my latest novel, Another Taste of Honey, and Harriet, a collection of short stories.

 Like any author, I don’t know if an idea will work until I try it. As always, I’m open to feedback, so please let me know if you think the idea has any promise.