Fantastic Shorts

Introduction The stories in Fantastic Shorts: Volume 2 cover a wide range of inspirations and times in my writing life. Several of them are only the beginning of much bigger worlds that I’m excited to explore and share. It also includes two very short stories of under 1,500 words—which is unusual for me—and finishes up with one that’s a touch over 10,000 words. Odds and Endings is a perfect example of a larger world than I expected when I wrote it in 2018. Since I first visited the magical bookstore, I’ve realized the source of all that magic is the town of Lightning Gap itself. The town is big and strong enough to not only hold several stories so far, but several genres and lengths, from Romance to Science Fiction, and from more short stories to an upcoming novel with more to come. Dawn Visitor, on the other hand, is the recreated version of the first short story I ever wrote, going back nearly thirty years to the early Nineties. I say recreated because that was an era when I ignored my own very good advice to back up your computer, and the original disappeared into a bricked hard drive. I first wrote it after waking from a dream of the first two dogs I had when I was in elementary school. That dream took me right back to that time and those feelings, and this very short story was the result. I’ve read Dawn Visitor out loud for groups several times, and I’m proud to publish it here for the first time. The Earworms was an assignment in a Fantasy writing workshop a few years back. Out of all the options available, I chose to have my hometown get attacked by music. I had an unreasonable amount of fun letting the songs help me tell this story. All I’ll say is I actually like a few of them, but I’ll join most people in intensely disliking the rest. My apologies in advance if any of them work their way into your brain. These folks may very well appear in a future story crossing over into another of my fictional worlds. The Spider Who Ate the Elephant started out as a prompt at another writing workshop. I can’t remember any of the others on the list, but the writing machine in my head lit up as soon as I saw what turned out to be the title of the story. It’s another very short piece like Dawn Visitor, with perhaps a similar melancholy feel. I wrote the whole thing in less than an hour, in one of those creative bursts that leave you breathless. Several years later in 2019, I entered it into competition in The Golden Nib, the annual contest from The Virginia Writers Club. Much to my surprise, my local group chose it as their entry for the statewide competition, and much to my delight, it ended up placing second in the state in Fiction. I’m publishing it here for the first time. You never know where that writing prompt that strikes you will end up! Little Five is a follow-up to my short story Terminalia, which I didn’t expect to have any kind of sequel. That’s a pattern I’m noticing more and more in my writing, and I’m having all kinds of fun with unexpected sequels lately. In this case, I tuned in to the obvious location for interdimensional visitors in Atlanta, especially in my fond memories of living there in the Nineties. Yes, I do expect there will be more stories involving Terminalia Travel in my future. The Last Dragonkeeper was my first foray into alternate world fantasy, and it was so much fun I’ve returned to it several times since. I had a blast taking the dragon lore I’d grown up with and twisting bits and pieces of it into different shapes and sizes. For the dragons themselves, I consulted my youngest nephew, and his contributions added what turned out to be the central turning point of the story. I hope we’ll get to work together on more tales of Allsentia and many other worlds in the future. And I hope you’ll enjoy reading this new collection of fantasy short stories as much as I enjoyed writing them and putting this together. There are definitely more to come. To learn more about me and find other short stories, along with novellas, novels, and collections, visit www.karikilgore.com. If you want to keep up with what I’m doing next, get free stories, and read exclusive content not available anywhere else, be sure to check out The Confidential Adventure Club. Both the Lightning Gap universe and the Terminalia universe have what I sometimes call DVD Extras that I’m happy to share with club members as fast as I can write them. Head over to www.confidentialadventureclub.com to join in the fun! And last but certainly not least, thank you for your support of me and my writing. It means the world to me and keeps me coming back to tell the next tale.