2020 can be many things. It could be the year that book you’ve been waiting for…still doesn’t hit the shelves. It could be the year lightning strikes and twists your personality. Optometry ads will probably barrage us with puns of perfect vision. Ice cream will melt, snow will fall, sand castles will dissolve, people will bleed, civilizations will crumble (somewhere in the universe), plagues will rise, and pots of rice will burn. To offer small consolations during this period of woe and hardship, I will be writing and posting one original story every month. I hope you enjoy them.
As an aside, welcome to Whitaker: The Portal to Untold Dimensions.
My wife created a challenge for herself called 52366, inspired by Ray Bradbury, which I have adapted for my dozen stories in 2020. I think it’s an excellent opportunity to hone my craft as a writer and also begin to share my work with a wider audience. My primary genre and length is fantasy novels, but I can’t write twelve of those in a year to my satisfaction. Someone can, I’m sure. Not me.
I expect that most or all of the stories will be speculative fiction (sci-fi/fantasy). Yet I hope to explore multiple types of stories over the year. One or more may intersect with novels I’ve already drafted or will draft. I’ll be sure to note in the post when there is a connection to one of my novels, even though I don’t yet know when said novels will appear in the world of readership.
One caveat: I am not a habitual writer of short fiction. To this point, almost all of the occasional short stories that I’ve written in the past were school assignments. My goal is to expand my writing skills, but along the way I am sure to blunder. Longer and shorter fiction are quite distinct: see Mary Robinette Kowal, who writes both, or a blog post at Liminal Pages for more detail.
Please come back every month in 2020! If you’d like to hear when I release new stories, sign up for the email list (in the site footer). Meanwhile I will be engaged in a journey to publish my debut science fantasy novel—how long the journey, time alone will show.
