Ryan Blackwell Plans

Ryan Blackwell is the protag in By Darkness Revealed. He\’s also the viewpoint character for \”Cat Fight\”, a short story which will be appearing in the not-too-distant future in an anthology.  With one short novel just about done, and a short story as well, my mind has naturally been shifting toward what else to do with him?
Well, as far back as November I was already planning to write more novels.  The 40-50k word novel seems to fit his stories well so far.  Short – fast – episodic content.  Lots of hard-hitting magical action packed into short spaces.  I started the second novel late last year, and I\’ve picked it up again this week to finish it.  But I\’ve also been looking at the short story I wrote, liking the look of it, and realizing the shorts are just another good way to mix it up with this character.
So I put in 2000 words tonight on another short story, this one set between two novels (\”Cat Fight\” is set after the second novel).  When done, I\’ll have a novel – short story – novel – short story tempo that should work pretty well.  I\’ve already got the rough idea in my head for novel #3, in fact.  And with the speed I can get short stories out and printed, this short should release almost the same time as By Darkness Revealed.  Nothing like getting a couple of complementary works up right on top of each other.
This sort of serialized fiction is something I\’ve thought about a lot.  I still have some regular, full length novels I want to do, including getting back to the science fiction trilogy I\’ve started.  But I think serials have a lot of promise in the ebook world.  They\’re pretty fast to write.  They promise good, reliable, fun reads.  And they can be priced at a level that makes them an easy purchase (Darkness and other short novels will start off at $2.99 for ebook formats; the short stories will be 99 cents when I release them as singles).
I\’ve got a new concept for a serialized work that I\’ve been tinkering with in my subconscious for a couple of months now.  It\’s an extension of the same sort of idea.  I\’ll go into more detail about my thoughts for that – a real serial fiction, not just a string of related novels and shorts – in my next post.