Upcoming short stories

Summer is a time when book sales typically slow down, at least for anything that’s not a beach read. To combat slow sales, many authors have found that it helps to schedule more book releases.

I’m definitely seeing the summer slump in my own sales numbers, but I also happen to have a bunch of unpublished short stories lying around, as well as a published one where the publishing rights revert in September. In fact, I’ve got enough short stories that I can publish one every three weeks from now to the end of summer.

So that’s what I’m going to do. And in order to have enough content for next summer, I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks after finishing Gunslinger to the Stars to write seven or eight new stories. I set a goal a few months ago to write a couple of short stories every month, but I’ve found that it’s very difficult to do that when I have a long-form WIP. Taking a break to pound out a few short stories seems like a much better way to write them.

Here is the release schedule:

  • JULY 24 – “Utahraptors at Dawn”
  • AUGUST 14 – “Welcome to Condescension”
  • SEPTEMBER 4 – “The Open Source Time Machine”
  • SEPTEMBER 25 – “L’enfer, c’est la Solitude”

If you’re subscribed to my newsletter, I do plan to do free giveaways with all of these stories eventually. However, I’m releasing them all at only 99¢ each, and it helps a lot when you read and review them right as they come out. Either way, I appreciate the support.

Also, I’m not sure how this slipped past me, but my short story “The Curse of the Lifewalker” is now available on the Sci Phi Journal! It’s behind a paywall, but you can read the first 20% or so for free. The publishing rights revert back to me next June, so it will be another year before I can indie publish it. In the meantime, the Sci Phi Journal is a great magazine, and you should definitely check them out!

Also, “A Hill On Which To Die” is coming out in a print anthology with Bards and Sages Publishing in the next couple of months! I’ll be sure to let you know when that’s available for purchase.

I’m working on the cover art for “Utahraptors at Dawn,” so I’ll be sure to do a cover reveal in the next couple of days. It’s going to be as fantastically awesome as the title suggests.

Take care!

By Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

4 comments

  1. Sounds good, can’t wait to read them! I too am going to try some short stories when my current novel is done this week. It can be a bit scary, daunting even, since my last two attempts at a short stories turned into novels! 😛

    1. Not sure yet, since I haven’t published a short story bundle. But it’s probably more profitable to bundle them, because you can charge enough to hit the 65%-70% royalty rates.

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