While my story The Harlequin and The Hatchetmen made its way into an anthology of stories many years ago, it sadly never found much in the way of an audience. After 10 years out on the market, though, it has found its way back to me... the question now is what should I do with this dark little drama?
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| After all, it's been in the dark long enough. |
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There Are Several Possibilities...
This story was one of my first horror shorts to be published. A gruesome, gangland splatterpunk story, it deals with a bunch of local enforcers finding the remains of one of their erstwhile colleagues outside a condemned movie theater known as the Bad Place. Despite the rumors and spook stories all about the things that go on in there, and the whispers about what might lurk in the musty shadows, the crew goes in with gats in hand to find out just what it is that killed their boss's favorite strongarm. That decision costs them, as they come face-to-face with the entity known only as the Harlequin.
While I still love this story, the collection it was part of never seemed to move all that many copies. I stopped bringing it to cons years ago, and now that it's gone out of print, my final (and only) royalty check for it was $1.35. So, it's safe to say that only a handful of people have ever seen this story.
But now that it's back in my hands, I'd like to put it back out on the market somehow... hopefully in a way that will garner a few more eyeballs than before.
I could, for example, make an audio drama version of this story, and put it up on my rumble channel The Literary Mercenary, just like I've done with other short stories like the dark modern fantasy tale of an angel tracking a child stealer in Suffer The Children, or the story of a gambler haunted by his past in the weird Western story Dead Man's Bluff. I could publish the story on Vocal's fiction platform, right alongside some of my other shorts like the Weird War II story Where The Red Flowers Bloom. I could also do both of those things, and make it a kind of package deal where one compliments the other.
Of course, I could also hold onto it, and keep it in my back pocket for a sequel to my short story collection The Rejects. I've reached a point in my career as a writer where a lot of my older stuff is going to start going out of print or working its way back to me... maybe something like The Returned? Or maybe Second Wind: A Collection of Short Stories?
Might have to workshop the title a bit.
Anyway, I wanted to reach out to my regular readers to see if there were any opinions about what you would all like to see done with this story... especially if you're a fan of my darker, bloodier tales. So if you have thoughts about what you'd like to see me do with this story, please leave your thoughts in the comments below so I can tally up the results, and give folks what they want to see!
Lastly, there are still a lot of my earlier horror short stories out on the market, for those who have an interest in them. From the collection of bloody 1950s horror Americana that is American Nightmare, to the big top spook show of Noir Carnival, or even the black ops terror of SNAFU: A Collection of Military Horror, there's all sorts of nasty little numbers out there. So drop by my Amazon author page, and take a look around before another of the titles goes out of print!
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That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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