Today’s a momentous day for me. This morning, the Campfire Podcast launched the first chapter of my story “The Autumn Lands” – for the next two weeks, the story will unfold, day by day, on Vance’s fantastic chapter-a-day podcast:
It almost didn’t happen.
Back in the late summer, my friends at Mischief Corner Books asked if I’d like to submit a story for their planned Fall-themed anthology. I was in the middle of a couple other projects at the time, and wasn’t sure I would have time to do it.
But I looked through my stable of old stories I had never finished, and came across this bit:
Jarris ran, winded, down the long dark street, lanterns casting a crazy patchwork of light across cobbles uneven enough to give even walkers pause. His breath heaved in his chest, pushing against bruised ribs, but he didn’t slow down, didn’t even dare glance back for the longest time.
Several times he stumbled, fell. Blood slipped down his bare leg from a skinned knee. But the whole town was silent, everyone else indoors for the night, doors themselves locked against the inky blackness of the night.
Time passed, time in delerium, with snatches of the recent past flitting by his eyes like birds, flappng, confusiong wirh thir unsteady rhythm.
At last, exhausted, he ducked behind a low wall, and at last dared look back. Back down the long lane he’d just run. Nothing. Nothing but blackness criss-crossed by lamp light at even intervals.
It was a bit longer than that, but not by much. And as I read it, I thought “that’s my story.” I have a bunch of these story bits – things I wrote a decade or two ago but never finished. “Between the Lines” and “The Homecoming” also grew out of “story starters” that I wrote years and years ago. They aren’t the same stories they would have been if I had finished them then. I hope they are better.
So I pulled it out of the files and ran with it. Jarris became Jerrith, Cas entered the story, and we were off on an epic quest.
Anyhow, thanks to the folks at MCB, “The Autumn Lands” was released first as part of the amazing “Travels Through the Scarlet Equinox“, which contains three other great stories by Angel Martinez, Freddy MacKay and Toni Griffin.
Then in January 2016, it was released as a stand-alone story in eBook and paperback, my very first print edition book.
And now, thanks to MCB and Vance Bastian at Campfire, it will be my first audio release as well.
Sometimes things just go your way, and like a surfer, you just gotta ride the wave.
If you want to follow along with the eBook, you can get it for 20% off here with code ALCPP20:
http://www.mischiefcornerbooks.com/store/p91/The_Autumn_Lands.html
And once the podcast has run its course, the book will be released in audio format from MCB:
