"Folklore Tales of Old Japan" status: published!

After crushing through 30K+ words in the first half of last November for NaNoWriMo, I promptly shelved my first draft collection of short stories based on Japanese myths, legends, and folklore. My thoughts at the time were to swing back around to the urban fantasy novel I’d finished earlier in the year — the novel that needed a ton of work at the plot level. The plot level I wound up futtzing with but mostly ignoring until last month (a topic for another blog post).

Flashback to a pre-Covid-19 lockdown world in early March, when I found myself no closer to being happy with the urban fantasy novel. Months had slipped by, and my finger was equally far from hitting the “Publish” button.

“Fuck. This.” < - - - - is what I said to myself.

I dug up the first drafts of those Japanese tales, reread them, realized that if I had just stuck with it, I could have published them by the end of 2019. I subjected myself to a healthy regimen of self-criticism in the form of a few days of wallowing. Then I got to work.

I wound up tweaking the focus of the book from a collection of strictly yokai tales to one that included more generic folklore and even some historically-based stories.

After that, it was time for a spin through ShutterStock for a cover, a manuscript port from Scrivener to Vellum, a quick stop at the U.S. Copyright Office, and Bob’s your uncle: Folklore Tales of Old Japan was available in ebook and print form!

Having successfully brought that project to an end, I suddenly found myself able to do the heavy editing necessary on the urban fantasy. I scrapped two plot lines and a couple dozen chapters. The word count cratered from around 100K to just over 60K.

I’m currently outlining a novella prequel and revising the novel at the same time to allow some of the settings and characters to integrate more seamlessly (plus I’m moving a lot of the world building from the novel to the novella).

Since I’m in a position of not having published any of the series, I’m trying to lay down as much of a foundation for future installments as possible, seeding the earlier works now with lots of cool characters and devices I can circle back to later.

But I’ve got a lot of editing and writing ahead of me before I can share those with the world.

In the mean time, please consider picking up a copy of Folklore Tales of Old Japan if that kind of thing scratches your reading itch.

Okay, that sounds weird.

In the mean time, please consider picking up a copy of Folklore Tales of Old Japan if that kind of thing sounds fun.”

Better.

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