One more week to read The Silent Steps of Murder

I’m set to edit my short story The Silent Steps of Murder. It will be removed from the website next week. If you still want to read it early and free you have until Saturday, August 24th to do so.

I will tighten it up and remove all mentions of the strangler case. Ending the story inside that kitchen will give it a much better final pop (hopefully). I may be adding dialogue, action, etc, but the plot will be basically the same.

Preliminary cover thoughts for my short story collection — For some reason, the cover of the Criterion Collection dvd of Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) has been floating around my brain. Maybe it’s the starkness.

These stories are enveloped in darkness. The cover should reflect that. Charcoal. Chiaroscuro. Scratched with a razor blade.

As for the image, it might be the mask from The Last Gaze which I modeled on the mask of The Beast of Jersey.

Maybe that mask in darkness.

After my book of short stories comes out, I may stop writing for a bit to learn a trade. Maybe I’ll become a welder and move to Wyoming. Then, I could write at a reasonable pace and do exactly what I want. I find myself attracted to solitude more and more.

So far the short stories include:

1. The Silent Steps of Murder — whodunit, footprints impossibility
2. The Last Gaze — whodunit, optography
3. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Pazuzu — whodunit, locked-room murder, supernatural
4. (Untitled Country House Mystery) — whodunit, dying message

The stories are informing each other. After The Silent Steps of Murder, I wanted to focus more on character development. I did that in The Last Gaze. But that story had less in terms of plot–AKA the reason I write these damn things. With Where There’s Smoke, There’s Pazuzu, I made the plot dense to satisfy myself. Then, I noticed that the reduced time in a short story meant less action. When I plotted my country house mystery, I focused on action. There’s more focus on suspense.

I don’t know if you’ll enjoy this book, but I can guarantee you will not experience the sameness that afflicts some short story collections.

I don’t know what it will be called. I won’t know until I have all the line up finalized. At that point, I may take a title from one of the stories or I may become inspired and come up with a title. How about Shadows and Puzzles? Is that pretentious? Those words come to mind.

I have time to think of something.