One of the things I find difficult as I work on both the Queen's Fury (what I'm calling my space epic; it's one of several working titles) is how I want to balance my sharing of the short fictions I'm writing to complement it. For example I have mostly finished a short story that details events from Mercy's time at the academy. Not a bad story, if I do say so myself, but I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with it.
On the one hand I think it might help generate interest if I post it publicly. I can always turn around if I self publish and put it in the eBook edition. You see something like this in Freakonomics where the authors include some of their favorite blog entries as extra chapters at the end of the book.
The problem with this plan is that it's predicated on me self publishing. Ideally I won't be, so once the story is published to the web it becomes useless for other publication. I don't know how a future publisher will feel with me having given so much away during the design and brainstorming phases.
On the other hand I can try selling the story to a magazine or collection. Of course part of the problem with this plan is that it can take weeks or months to find out if a given story is accepted, and if it is, I lose some of my rights to it. Add to this the challenge of selling short stories as stand alones when the intention is to keep them part of the world itself. Will I actually sell any stories if I'm writing in a some what unique world that might not be immediately accessible to those who haven't read any of the other ones?
I feel more pulled towards the first and accept that everything I can do to build interest will have a greater net value overall. I'm not sure the pace I want to share short fictions, though so I will have to pace myself as well. Though, I think I may have to put some effort into writing sale-able stories as well. It's all a balancing act....
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