armageddon mud

One of the things I’ve decided to do over the next six months is release a number of my stories in small mini-collections in electronic form. Each of these will consist of 2-3 already published stories, with 1-2 ones original to the collection. The first is Halloween Quartet, which contains “Whose Face This Is I Do Not Know” (appeared originally in Clarkesworld), “Niobe in the Rain” (appeared originally in Serpentarius), “So Glad We Had This Time Together” (appeared originally in Apex Digest), and “Pumpkin Knight,” which is original to the collection.

The next one will be Desert Quartet, which will contain “Aquila’s Ring,” (originally appeared in Light and Shadow II), “Karaluvian Fale” (appeared originally in Giganotasaurus), “Her Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight” (the title story from my second collection), and “Mirabai the Twice-Lived,” which is original to that collection. It’ll also contain an essay about the world in which all of those stories are set, that of Armageddon MUD, and my experience working with it.

Other e-projects in the works: a mini-collection of flash, a mini-collection of superhero stories, and something collecting blog musings about fiction.

Why do this? Because I do think electronic publishing is clearly the way the industry is going. I’m curious about the power to sell one’s work that it promises the author and I’d like to get in on what seems to be at least the first or second, if not ground, floor of the movement.

I’m lucky in that I have a little bit of a name, acquired through publishing short stories. I don’t know that this would work for someone with no already established platform. And I don’t expect to make a vast sum of money from them. But I do expect there to be a slow trickle. At least – that’s my hope.

How will I spread the word of them? I’ve learned a little from publicizing Near + Far, but I’m not sure how relentless I want to be about pushing these. I’ll certainly talk about the experience of putting them together on here, and will be mentioning them on social networks as well as on my mailing list. Suggestions are welcome, as always 😉

If you want to sign up for that mailing list, by the way, which will come no more than once a month and mention new publications and classes, fill it out here:

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One of the desires expressed at the very first Armageddon player-staff meeting I ever attended was a yen to move away from “a hack and slash economy,” where players made their income by selling the gear off NPCs (and the occasional PC) that they had killed. How, one immortal noted, could the world be realistic when there was no coded reflection of the material underpinnings of it? How to create this economic reflection was a question that remained in the air for several years, and it was not until discussion of implementing crafting code came up that such a move seemed possible.