Talked to a few people about what I should do with the extra writing time coming in. Some people said (the most, actually) that I should do End Times. A few said I should put out the older novel.

No one told me to work on the shorts.

Which, surprisingly is what I’ve decided to do. I spend a good bit of time studying the world of publishing (as you do in whatever industry you focus in–acting, insurance, etc.), and numbers/rules stick with me for some reason. Anyways, J.A. Konrath says something like you should always have six shorts going around to different magazines. I have exactly zero. More, a fan/friend of mine told me she reads horror mags and finds out about a good number of writers she would have never known about that way. ANNNNNND, I haven’t written a short story in years; flexing those muscles certainly can’t be bad for me.

So there’s three reasons I’m going with shorts first: 1) I like rules, Konrath gave me one. 2) It’s a way to promote to a market that has no idea I exist. 3) Writing different lengths of fiction is going to make me better in the long run.

So I’m going to complete six works of short fiction, probably around 30,000 words total. Then, I think I’m going to go ahead and work on putting out Bullet Trail.

Glad we got this worked out and thanks for everyone that gave me some advice!