Dear Reader…
Welcome back to The Weekly, and Happy November!
The end of October was chock-full of finales, frights, and fiction fun, so I hope you enjoy this round-up of everything I posted in the last week or so, along with a snapshot of what to expect in November. You won’t want to miss a thing!
Let’s get started!
End of October Round-Up
In Case You Missed It…
Behind The Door - In this short supernatural story, a widowed father is given an impossible choice.
The Uninvited Guest - our 2023 Hallowe’en Special! When Ivy and her friends attend their first high school party, they find out that someone there has an unusual agenda.
Goldgreen is officially complete! Don’t miss the conclusion…
In Episode Eight: The Storm, the storm arrived, and everything culminated.
And finally, in the Epilogue, we jumped ahead over twenty years later, when Mr. Hatch is interviewed by a young neighbor for a school project and reveals a startling mystery. Along with the finale I answered some reader questions in the included Q&A!
For Substack Writers: as Talebones teeters on the edge of a substantial subscriber milestone, I wanted to give back to the community by sharing some honest, practical tips for improving your online writing from someone growing organically on the platform. I’m no expert, but I’ve learned a few things along the way!
Check out How To Write Good: Guidelines For Online Fiction Writers!
A Goal Reached!
With our Hallowe’en Special, I am so pleased to announce that we juuuuust squeaked by and reached our goal of 3 short stories posted in October! (Woohoo!)
Archive Members: Look out this week for a poll to pick which of our three October short stories will get Archived at the end of the Fall Season!
Learn more about our Archive here.
For The Rest of November
A few things to keep in mind…
No Serial This Month: For the newer followers, a quick word to let you know that I’ll be taking a hiatus from weekly serial-fiction posts this month, both for a bit of a necessary brain-break, and also to prep a new serial ahead of our Winter Season in December! But feel free to read through Goldgreen, our completed fall serial, if you’re looking for something long-form to savor!
No “The Weekly” Posts: Because I won’t have as much to update you all about, this will very likely be the last “The Weekly” post for the month. But look out for our next update post just ahead of December!
Short Story Goal: There won’t be a serial, but I am intending to keep up my goal of 3-4 pieces of short fiction this month! A few personal challenges I’d like to hit:
A science fiction tale (not my usual genre to read or write!)
An off-island story (one tale unrelated to Ferris Island, just for fun!)
Guest Posts TBA: I’m also hoping to share some guest posts and collaborations this month, but I gotta admit—the busy end of October really threw me and my planning for a loop! So these are still TBA, but keep your eyes peeled.
An Advent Offering: Finally, for fans of my nature-steeped spiritual writings over at The Wildroot Parables, my poetry-based Advent daily devotional—Pilgrim God—has been fully reformatted and is now available for purchase as an ebook through Amazon! (And if you're a Kindle Unlimited reader, you can read it for free!)
A Note of Gratitude
Finally, since November is the perfect time to meditate on gratitude, I want to tell each and every one of you how grateful I am that you’re here.
Thank you to everyone who reads, who comments, who presses that little “heart”. Thank you to everyone who supports Talebones through subscriptions and tips. And thank you to every lurker who prefers to simply read.
If you’re here, you’re part of the ongoing Talebones story, and I simply can’t thank you enough.
Talebones is going gangbusters, to grab an old tag... Don't know how you do it!
Happy November, enjoy a well earned break! Thank you for lightening our days with your stories!