an explanation

I suppose that, if anyone's interested, I should explain what's going on...but first, some reminders! Thursday is the last full day (time zones being what they are) to enter the YA Spring Fling! You could win e-books galore, including one of ten copies of the first Monkey Queen book Of Introductions And Abductions, and all sorts of swag, including a signed set of all three Monkey Queen paperbacks and a signed and personalized Michiko and Beth notecard! http://www.sarahdaltonbooks.com/#%21the-books/cait

And Polymanga starts on Friday! Meet Monkey Queen cover artist Willow, and many more guests! Just head to Bordeaux, Switzerland... http://www.polymanga.com/?lang=en

The explanation is after the cut.


First, I wanted to apologize for anyone who might have expected me to actually post "Hound of the D'Ubervilles". That one never got written. So why where there two short stories and not one?

Well, there was originally just one. I came up with the basic plot for "Three Women In A Stew" many months ago, inspired by (which is nicer than saying "stolen from") a similar scene in Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men In A Boat". When I decided to put up an April Fool's story, it was a natural, and I wrote and finished it in mid-March.

This past Saturday, I was thinking over future posts on this blog when I realized how close I was to hitting 150 posts. I wanted to make the new story post 150, so I came up with a way to stretch things out: I would tease three different stories, one per day, to hit 150 on the big day, and have everyone guess which was the real one. (I had an emergency post that screwed up the post count, but that's how the world works.)

So, I needed to come up with two other story ideas. A Game Of Thrones had been sticking in my head, so I came up with a pun and a story hook.

But something funny happened. The characters I came up with started to come alive. Scenes and lines popped into my head. So, I went with it, and I wrote a 5200-word short story in just over two days. It was spontaneous, and the plot mutated as I went along, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Sleepy, but happy.

Finally, for you continuity buffs, "Three Women In A Stew" takes place during the very last scene in the second book, and "A Game Of Scones" after the fourth. Here's the new Monkey Queen bibliography, in chronological order:

Of Introductions And Abductions (Book One)

The Brigadoon Boondoggle (Book Two)

"Three Women In A Stew (To Say Nothing Of The Guinea Pig)" (short story)

Under The Stars Of Faerie (Book Three)

"Curse Of The Were-Corgi" (short story)

"Best Christmas Ever!" (short story)

A Tiding Of Magpies (Book Four, coming c. May 2015)

"A Game Of Scones" (short story)

[REDACTED] (Book Five, coming Fall 2015)