Stories – written
| FICTION |
David has been writing short fiction, and working on a novel, since he joined a genre fiction writing group. His first meeting with the group was Sunday, April 7th, 2019. David was 56 at the time. He has not submitted his fiction to journals, but hopes to in early 2024. Here are the stories that he has workshopped. Hopefully, down the road, you may see some of these in journals! Some of the pieces he brought a second time, to get them in better shape. David brought chapters from a novel in progress the first three times he workshopped, and felt that he needed to work on short stories, and get a handle on that form first, before continuing with the novel. The Vault group has an upper max of 7,000 words per submission, so David broke this rule on a number of occasions, and has kept to that limit, after a couple digressions, sometimes bringing the first or last 7,000 words of a story to the group.
The Vault group consists of 6 fiction writers:
David Clink; Stephen Humphrey; Francine P. Lewis; Kris Westerlaken; Heather J. Wood; and Kurt Zubatiuk.
When David joined he was under the impression that it was a genre fiction writing group, that brought stories that had SF / Fantasy / Horror elements, but the group is not against the occasional story or memoir that does not have these elements.
Hugo definitions for lengths of stories
Novel = 40,000+ words; Novella = 17,500 – 40,000 words; Novelette = 7,500 – 17,500 words; Short Story = < 7,500 words.
F = Fantasy; SF = Science Fiction; H = Horror; D = Dystopian; C = Comedy.
Date Title of Piece Genre Category Word Count
May 2019 Mirthwood, Book 1, chapters 1-4 F/SF Novel ~5,500 words
July 2019 Mirthwood, Book 1, chapters 5-7 F/SF Novel ~6,600 words
Aug 2019 Mirthwood, Book 1, chapters 8 F/SF Novel ~2,400 words
Oct 2019 Heirloom SF/H Short Story ~6,700 words
Jan 2020 ILOVEU pt. 1 SF Novella ~9,000 words
Feb 2020 ILOVEU pt. 2 SF/D Novella ~11,200 words
Apr 2020 The Pipe… SF/H Short Story ~5,500 words
Jun 2020 Meeting Again, for the First Time . . . pt.1 SF Novelette ~6,800 words
Aug 2020 Meeting Again, for the First Time . . . pt.2 SF/H Novelette ~6,800 words
Sep 2020 That First Contact Mission Was a Joke (not workshopped) SF/C Short Story ~1,300 words
Nov 2020 The Fence SF/H Short Story ~7,000 words
Mar 2021 The Amazon Planet… SF Short Story ~4,600 words
Jun 2021 Rejection Letter from Time Travel Quarterly Magazine . . . SF Short Story ~7,000 words
Sep 2021 The Hunting of the Jabberwock (early draft) SF/H Novella ~6,600 words
Jan 2022 The Hunting of the Jabberwock (end of 21K word story) SF/H Novella ~6,600 words
Jun 2022 Heirloom (revised version of Oct 2019 submission) SF/H Short Story ~6,800 words
Sep 2022 ILOVEU pt. 1 (end of revised version of Jan 2020 sub) SF/H Novella ~7,000 words
May 2023 The Ghost Dispatch Service SF/H Short Story ~3,100 words
Nov 2023 A Robot Found Buried in the Sand . . . (upcoming) SF Short Story ~7,000 words
