Yesterday was the official first day of summer which goes on until September 22. This summer, I was going to be very busy in the area of writing and releasing books. I a must be honest though. I’m a little bit behind as I have been working on several projects at the same time and I’m trying to streamline my process so that I am more productive. Part of my productivity is going to be reading more material and actually watching genre-specific film and television because of what I have planned. But that’s just a long introduction to tell you that there’s still plenty of material out there that you can get and try out for your reading pleasure this summer. In other words, it’s time for another RIU Shift Event.
Now if you’re not familiar, an RIU Shift Event is another way of saying a free promotion. That’s when I get together with other authors and we decide that it would be a good idea to other people’s audiences that are similar to ours. I do this every once in a while and I have done it again for some of my short stories. And up until July 4, you will be able to download a plethora of short stories absolutely free.
There is something attractive about a short story. Number one, it’s self-contained story which means that normally, you can sit down and read it in one sitting and get the experience in a short amount of time. Of course, I broke that rule with The Dark Corner miniseries. But that was an anomaly and the chances of me doing that again are slim. I actually have something else in the works that I think that you will enjoy that might be construed as similar but not quite the same. But that’s a long time in the future right now so I’ll just hold off from getting into the meat and potatoes of that until we cross that road.
Another good thing about short stories is that they really give you a decent glimpse into a writer’s style. Now, believe it or not, it’s actually harder to write a good short story than it is to write a novel. A writer has to be very focused and every word has to be used for maximum impact because the time that they have to draw the reader into the story is much less than in a novel where you could take chapters to do that or at least a chapter. So it can be a challenge to write a good short story which normally runs somewhere between 3000 and 5000 words. The only truly short story in The Dark Corner is The Visitor. It took some time to get that story just right and there is still little tweaks and things that I make every now and again as I go over the stories. Is one of the wonderful things about self-publishing. If there’s something that needs to be changed or you see something that you want to add, you can do that relatively easy.
I’m in two promotions current
ly. Now, this is not so you can go get my books which you probably already have (though if you don’t have them, then you can go and download them for free here at my website). The main reason why I present this to my audience is that I believe you have an interest in what it is that these authors are writing. However, I must preface this by saying have not read any of their material so I can’t tell you whether it’s anything is good or not. All I can tell you that it is free and you can try it out. If you don’t like you, just delete it and move on to the next one. Which is another good thing about short stories. You don’t have to be too invested in reading a long novel. You can sit down and within a half an hour or so be finished with the story and if you liked it enough, go to the author’s website and see what else that they have that you may be interested in.
The first motion that you can go to and get your freebies is Summer Scares. These stories highlight the horror/thriller genre with a little bit of sci-fi thrown in there. You should have plenty of stories here since there are 50 books in this promo. I have to do is go to the Summer Scares page and began to download until your heart is content.
The second promotion is the Summer Shorts Sampler. This one is a little smaller with only 30 stories in the mix but it should be enough for you to pick your way through and download something you could read while you’re sitting at the doctor’s office like something from one author then is a possibility that they may have more than one story since this was a promo where the authors could submit up to shorts which is what I did. So hop on over to the Summer Shorts Sampler page and take a look at some of the authors there. If you find something that’s good, let me know by leaving a comment. I’m going to be reading quite a bit this summer and will look into books of those who communicate with me or are a part of the RIU citizenry.
