Melody Writes

"The Client" published in Little Demon Digest #1 by Little Demon Books on December 8, 2020. Premise: Lily is an ambitious legal assistant who one day dreams of becoming a lawyer. Forced to return home to care for her sick mother, she starts a new job at a local law firm. After a few weeks, she meets a mysterious client, Mr. Cromwell, who takes a strong interest in her. Lily is both repulsed and fascinated by Mr. Cromwell. As she is pulled deeper into his world, she fights to escape his influence and keep herself and her mother safe. Background: While technically not my first publication, "The Client" was my first full length short story publication and I'm very proud of it. I thought I'd write about my journey with this story. Years ago I completed my Master of Arts in Classics and was struggling finding consistent work. During the school year, I taught Myth and History, but during the summer, I worked retail. Boo. After a few years of this I decided to go ...

Project: Short Story Exploration   Last year, I read 70 books, most of which were novels, so for 2024, I’m going to focus on short fiction. I’ll still be reading and reviewing novels, but I want to take a deep dive into short stories. I’ve been accumulating quite the backlog of anthologies, magazines, and bookmarked stories to read. I will be working my way through them and journaling about each short piece as I go, recording date, story, author, thoughts, what I learned, etc. I’m not setting a specific goal, but I am estimating reading somewhere around 250 stories of varying lengths this year. Then towards the end of each month, I’ll be posting my thoughts so far, recommendations, etc. Why am I doing this? I want to get to know the short form better and, in turn, grow my own short fiction writing. I also want to develop a journaling habit, but have no interest in writing about my day-to-day life*. Years ago, I turned up my nose slightly at short stories. I didn’t hate them, but I ...