January | February 2024

Greetings!

In this issue: stories of romantic love and a summary of all the January 2024 story posts and podcast episodes.
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💙FOOLS FOR LOVE💚

As I understand it, some are celebrating a season of romantic love 🤔. If you’re in the mood for lovey dovey stories, you can start with a podcast episode I just released, “The Ogre and the Elf Go to Honeymoon City.”

Personally, I’m still in a season of plans and machinations. Is that boring? Maybe you’d rather hear about love first. Back in 2021, I tried something I called a “showcase campaign.” The idea was to highlight stories that shared some common element, something more specific than genre. I only managed to do two showcases that year. One of them was centered on the theme of romantic love.

Here’s the post where you can find all the stories I highlighted: Six Days of Love​

(Fair warning: I had just started doing trailers. These early efforts, quite clumsy.)

And here’s a little about each story if you’d like to go directly to the one that interests you:

​Six Fools and the Dragon. 🐉
A mustachioed scoundrel gathers five allies to help him save his wife, who was turned into a dragon for trying to save him. You got your wizard, your knight, your barbarian, your archer, and a fire-cat?

I love do a story with high jinks.

​The Bard of Trilenkary. 💛
A rice merchant with a heart of gold gives away his chance to become a bard, but will the love in his heart help to change his fortune?

​The Prisoner Under the Sea. 🔱
Tossed overboard during a storm, a sailor is saved by a people who live at the bottom of the sea. He would do anything to return to his love, even let the sea change him forever…

​The Merchant and the Magician. 🕯
A merchant goes off to war, leaving behind an enchanted candle for his family to watch. So long as he lives, the flame will burn. When the flame goes out, his family mourns. But when it suddenly returns, his wife sets out to find him and bring him home before the flame goes out again.

​The Everwalker. 👢
A young woman wakes to find an enchanted pair of slippers by her bed. She makes a wish for the slippers to lead her to her true love, not realizing that her destination is much farther than she imagined. And the slippers will not let her stop until she reaches it.

By the way, I’ve transported the concept of showcasing or highlighting stories that share some common element right here into the Storyfeather Gazette. Here’s an issue where I highlighted horror stories: 13 Spooky Podcast Episodes (Sep/Oct 2023 Issue)
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(It’s a different way to feel gooey inside, heh, heh.)
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Here's a round-up of the short stories and podcast episodes I released over January 2024.

SHORT STORIES

Click the banner above to go to the Year Eleven page.
Click the story title to go directly to the story post, or the button to watch a trailer and learn a bit more about the story before you decide if you want to read it.

~FEBRUARY STORIES~

The monthly theme for February is the forbidden frontier—it's Forbidden February. Okay so, the obvious thing is a boundary beyond which one is not permitted to pass. But what else? What if there are some frontiers that are only forbidden to some people? A place? An opportunity, perhaps?

PODCAST EPISODES

Click the banner above to go to the Season Seven page.
Click the buttons below to watch a trailer, listen to the episode, and read the story.

I mentioned at the top of this email that I was still in a phase of making plans. Every year, I get overwhelmed at the prospect of planning out an entire year. On the one hand, it's exciting to have that fresh start. Twelve whole new months. Oh, the possibilities. But once I get down to actual planning, I find that timeframe to be too long. How can I plan for what I’ll be doing in October when I don’t know how my plans for April will go? It’s so easy to put off things I don’t want to do, thinking I still have several months ahead of me. Next thing I know, it’s December.
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I recently started reading a book about ditching the annual planning mentality for a much shorter timeframe. I’m eager to try it. More details in the next issue for anyone who’s interested. And speaking of the next issue, I’m considering a slight change in the release cadence, and a shift toward a much more casual Gazette.

​Till next time.
—Nila

P.S.
Interested in writing fiction as well as reading it? Are you a skilled writer who just needs an adaptable plan for getting the writing done with everything else you’ve got going on? Allow me to help. In about 40 minutes, I can teach you an abbreviated version of the method I use to write my own short stories. Just watch the video at the top of this page: FASTER FICTIONEER.

(And if you’d like to learn even more from me, you can find out how on that page.)