Short Stories to Novels

This is my first full summer as a Michigan resident. The weather, excluding some air-quality concerns, has been excellent –– unlike everywhere else, it seems. The sun doesn’t set until 9:30 each day, at the tail end of the Eastern Time Zone. We are having a great time exploring downtown Detroit and all that the region has to offer. And work is slower without students in the building, so I've been bringing the dog to work. 

On the writing front, I finished a novel that I hope kicks off a new series. My agent is currently shopping it. While I wait to hear, like Sybil, I’ve been working on short stories. One is under review, the other is based on my outline and notes for what would be the second novel in the new series (yes, I’m a serial optimist). 

I like writing short stories based (pretty loosely) on an idea I have for a novel. It’s a nice way to try out the plot, work with the characters, and see what sidelines I want to expand in the book version. I got the idea when I read “Sadie When She Died,” by Ed McBain, (a short story I love) and found that McBain must have loved it, too, because he later turned it into a novel. I did this first with “Autumn’s Crossing,” which appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and later led to Bitter Crossing. The endings aren’t the same –– something I find that happens often; short stories can be open-ended, even in our genre, and I’m a sucker for a good open-ended finish. But the characters are the same, and I learn a lot about them as I work with them, which saves me (some) revision later when I write the book version.

It’s all about process, and in this fickle business, you need to enjoy the process, as Tom wrote about recently. 

I’d love to hear from our readers who likewise bridge short fiction with novels.