I have spent most of today sorting and collating stories to try to come up with a tentative “best of” list, with things of short story length that can stand on their own. These will be posted from this blog’s queue at noon each day from now until the end of the month, as “I Do Not Fight Monsters” was posted today.

I wound up with eight of the required nine, inclusive of today’s. It was challenging in part because the largest single body of my work is serial stories, and while there are some excellent standalone stories in my serial universes, I did not want them to dominate things. So there will be two, maybe three stories from the Tales of MU universe (or MUniverse), though not ones that require knowledge or investment of the main ongoing story.

Interesting thing about how it shook out: while a few of the selections defy such easy categorization, it was about half modern supernatural/horror and half high fantasy.

The point of this exercise, again, is to give prospective patrons a clear idea of what I have to offer, fiction-wise. I’ve been getting a lot of note for my wit and my insight; not so much for my storytelling, and that’s going to change. I’m still shaping up my Patreon presentation to reflect this, but starting in June I’m going to be writing and sharing (under a patron-only lock, at least initially) a new short story every month. This is not going to be the extent of my writing activities, but I do think it’ll be a draw.

I chose today’s selection because it was my first full-length story I submitted for publication anywhere as an adult, and it was accepted on the first try. It also has another bit of “historical” significance: my now-boyfriend Jack read it aloud in one of his college classes, years ago, before we had ever even met in person. Surprisingly (or maybe not, as I actually am kind of a big deal), his professor was already familiar with me.

Anyway, if you want to see what I have on tap, just bookmark http://www.alexandraerin.com/category/patron-preview and check it every day in May. A new story goes up at noon, Eastern time.