Making, Curious Tales: A Father and Son Short Story Collection

Four books down, more to go. For the first books we both hired professional editors, sent our books to some beta readers, and sat down to write and edit. This, our first collaborative effort, was a little different.

First, we actually started with more stories than what is included. (Don’t forget you can go to our short story section to read our previews.) It was unique having too much to work with and whittling it down to the good stuff. But eventually we chose the stories that we enjoyed the most. As we say to ourselves, a little bit of something for everyone. 

At the beginning there were no sections, we only realized at the end that we had written in some similar veins. We spitballed a few ideas, but eventually settled on the four section titles we currently have:

• Section 1: Thought Experiments

• Section 2: Fantastic Worlds

• Section 3 A Future in the Stars

• Section 4: Back to Reality

A friend suggested a table of contents and we be damned if that didn't work out just right. We do it ourselves, flit around a compendium of short stories until we find the stories we like. So, we want you to have that same luxury. 

We read them all again in the new context (not an easy task when you have read them so many times) and chipped and shaped. We took turns going through, read it aloud to one another, read it aloud to ourselves, and after a few rounds of concentrated edits later, we felt comfortable with what we had. 

After that, we sent it to one of our best proofreaders, Grandma. She likes a hard copy so the first proof went to her. After she had a crack at it, we went through again.

Nothing fancy this time, just good old time and hard work.

It was a different process, but it worked. May it inspire you all to write your own stories. Let us know which one of ours you enjoyed.