Planned Beta Release for Upcoming Short Fiction Collection

Credit: Pixabay

I've been working on my upcoming short fiction collection all week but have been worn out too many times, mostly from a bad case of allergies and insomnia. When I would work on one of my short stories for the book, there were several times when I nearly fell asleep ready to drop my head on the keyboard. So, I'd just go to bed intending to get more done in the morning but once in bed I wouldn't be able to fall asleep. Isn’t that ironic? Maybe I should make the computer keyboard my bed from now on. 

Well, there's some good news. Tuesday, I shared with my writer's critique group part two of "The Watch Party", one of the short stories that I’m including in my book. Compared to when the group critiqued part one several weeks ago, they didn’t have any problems with it. However, I did not factor in the changes suggested by the group from the last time. I've only done that for the first part so far. So, there's going to be some work that I need to do to harmonise the two parts. 

I also have to mention that I had been so busy with last weekend's newsletter, “Night Creautures' Call”, that I did not submit my story to the group until late. We normally agree to submit by the Friday before we meet at the latest, but I was so busy with the newsletter that I didn’t submit my story until that Sunday. Therefore, that gave everyone less time to give it a thorough reading. So, there was that possibility that the reading was not as efficient as it may have been and so they might have only seen mostly what was on the superficial level and so were simply impressed by that. I can't say for sure. 

All I can say is that part two of the story was the most difficult because it goes into heavy stuff like parallel universes, alternative histories and quantum mechanics. So, it would be easy for anybody to gloss over mistakes in the subject matter and I don’t think there were any physicists in the group that evening. The group that night only consisted of five or six people. Not that nobody's feedback helped, it's just that this has been one of the most difficult stories that I've written, maybe the most difficult I've ever written. And so I know there are flaws that I'm not seeing and that are easy for other people to miss if they’re not given enough time to read the story. 

For these reasons, I'm strongly planning on releasing a beta version of the short story collection. Hopefully, I can release it within the next month. As I said in Wednesday’s blog hop post, the release date for the final product has been pushed to October. So, if anyone is interested in serving as a beta reader and therefore getting a sneak peek at the book, please let me know and I'll be happy to send you a copy. 

Well, I'm going to stop here so I can catch up on some of that fiction writing and complete more of the book. I'll have more excitement, maybe even bigger excitement, for you here next week. 

Fellow authors: Do you release beta copies of your books before releasing a final version? Avid readers: Are you willing to read a beta copy of a book you think you might like or would this spoil the final version for you?

Until next time . . .