From Writing Short Stories to Creating a Short Story Collection: Bad Girls: Five Tales of Twisted Teens is a YA Horror Collection of Murder and Macabre

 

I love writing challenges, and when I got the idea to take on a challenge to write a short story every week for one year, I jumped on that! It took a lot of patience and planning, but fortunately, I managed to write 52 short stories in 2016.

 

Now that I had over 50 short stories written, what was I going to do with them all?

 

Why, revise and submit them, of course! After all, I do try to get my short stories published, and having those extra credits would help boost the number of short stories I have published so far.

 

That was the plan, anyway.

 

In addition to being someone who likes to do writing challenges, I am also someone who notices patterns. And at some point, as I continued browsing my list of stories written in those 52 weeks, I noticed a pattern.

 

After I finished writing all those stories, I made a list of the stories including the title, word count and genre. And in browsing the list during the times I was ready to tackle another story for submitting somewhere, I noticed some common genres popping up.

 

Some of the stories had a whole “bad girl” vibe going for it. I saw that and thought, Why not take those stories and put them into a book with that particular theme?

 

That’s how the idea for Bad Girls: Five Tales of Twisted Teens was born. And since I was already self-publishing books, I decided to self-publish this book as well – even though I hadn’t yet self-published any horror!

 

With this goal in mind, I sent the stories off for edits. The person editing the stories happened to be one of the owners of one of my regular publishers. She edited the manuscript and sent it back to me with her comments and suggestions.

 

As I began working on revising and editing the stories per those comments and suggestions, that tiny idea I had for a book grew into a bigger idea for a whole ‘nother book: Why not combine these stories with other stories, too, and first publishing them as ebooks then combining them all into one big print collection of stories with different themes?

 

I pitched the idea to that same publisher and they liked it. I continued working on edits and revisions.

 

Unfortunately, that “big” idea did not pan out, because the book that Bad Girls turned out to be was not one this particular publisher would accept. They suggested that I self-publish the book and, with that suggestion, I got a new idea for how to combine Bad Girls with a different story collection idea for a print book sometime in the near future.

 

So, I was back to square one with my collection of YA horror stories. I am extremely grateful to the publishers’ extra help with edits on the manuscript. And thank you for help with the cover, as well. Thank you, Denise Bartlett and Charlotte Holley! You guys are amazing!

 

I also ran into one bit of a technical problem with one story, which Charlotte pointed out. I tried to research how to fix this problem, but my research didn’t turn up very much information. So I turned to my friend and fellow horror writer, Julie Fletcher, for help. We chatted about the issue and Julie figured out how I could fix that problem in the story. Thanks, Julie! You rock!

 

It's interesting the turn of events that happened with this book: This is my tenth year as a self-publisher, and I thought that self-publishing in a genre that I love to write in, horror, is a great way to celebrate my ten-year anniversary in self-publishing. So, in a way, it makes sense that this happened the way it did. I always say things happen for a reason. I didn’t even realize this was my tenth year as a self-publisher until after the book’s release! How appropriate for this lover of horror fiction. I'm taking it as a sign: Perhaps it is now time to self-publish horror story collections!

 

And as for that bigger book of story collections I had an idea for? It has been tabled, for now!

 

Thankfully, I managed to get the ebook of Bad Girls out in time for Halloween. I am still working on getting the print out, but the ebook is available in various formats through Smashwords, as well as for Kindle on Amazon an Nook through Barnes & Noble.

 

Here is the blurb:

 

The days of being tormented are over. Five girls find the power to fight back against those who thought it was okay to hurt them.

 

"The best kind of revenge is the kind that no one would expect."

 

Five girls have been tormented by people who thought it was okay to hurt them.

They never expected them to fight back.

 

The victim would never fight back.

The loser would never fight back.

The plain Jane would never fight back.

The freak would never fight back.

And the abandoned would never fight back.

 

But they do.

 

Not only do they fight back, but they delight in freeing their inner monsters on anyone who hurts them ---

 

The abusers

 

The bullies

 

The fake friends

 

Five girls find the power within themselves to fight back and get their revenge on all of them. And make sure their tormentors pay.

 

Bad Girls: Five Tales of Twisted Teens is available in ebook format through:

 

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble 

Smashwords