Just a snack

Because, sometimes you just want a snack.

Some people might say I’ve probably bit off more than I can check with the running serial, Vengeance, My Heart, and they might be right in that assessment.

The story currently sits with twenty-six planned episodes (and approximately 4 posts per episode) for the full story arc and my reserving the right to extend it to a second and a third arc. Clocking in currently at ~40k words, I am trending towards about 170 pages (assuming 235 word/page when you account for rapid-fire dialog and end-chapter whitespaces.

That’s about 1/3 of the way for folks reading up through today. An estimated 400-page novel when we are all said and done.

So why the heck am I looking sideways when I have a long haul ahead (and I am running out of content to share post-Ep. 6)?

As I said, sometimes you just want a snack. And that goes for writing. too.

Or reading.

Not everything should be epic length.

So, those who visit the main page of the VMH site to get your reading on may have notices a little something that popped up there with a “coming soon” appended to it.

I have a plan to write some shorter bite-sized pieces that take place within The Stranger’s world that are only connected to her in the way that accidents and serendipity happen. Well, they are already roughed out. I do that kind of thing when I lay awake at night.

What the plan is will be for very short stories in the city she is travelling towards. They all take place in the slums adjacent to an unsavory backyard with even worse problems than living in the slums. A couple of young folks without proper homes take over an old abandoned tannery and decide to make a name for themselves; to get some street cred. And if some coin comes with that effort, who are they to argue?

The snack-sized stories are designed to break up the heavy seriousness of VMH, and to show a different angle of the world away from the road. While the world itself is still very much crapsack, and the young’uns situation isn’t great, I’m hoping to infuse the side stories with a little more (dry) humor and capers than you might find reading VMH.

It is called “Tales from the Fell Wynd”, named for the alley the kids haunt. And will probably be irregular in how they show up.

I’m looking to cross-post them at both sites.

The idea behind it? Not all tales that creep into my skull fit with the Stranger’s story in a direct manner. And yet, they fit in her world quite easily.

That’s it. Nothing fancy.

Anyway, I’m hoping to get the inaugural tale posted before the end of the weekend. See you then.