Book #3 Has Arrived!
I’M EXCITED TO announce the release of my third book, White Sail, Blue Seas! This new book is a collection of stories I have been slowly chipping away at during the past 18 months, including a few Westerns and tales about surfing and the sea, along with some horror and suspense stories. I am quite proud of these new tales, and I truly hope that my readers enjoy them.
When I started writing fiction in 2018, my goal was to complete a couple of worthy stories to publish online and share with friends and family. Before I knew it, I had completed my first book, and things took off from there. I now split my free time between writing adult fiction and fiction for young readers.
I appreciate all the support and encouragement from folks I have met in the online writing community during the past few years. I am also pleased to see that many fellow fiction writers have been taking the plunge and publishing their first books. Keep at it, fiction writers!
My first book, They Are Here Now, was a collection of short stories I had published on Medium. My second book, Kaia and the Whale, was a collection of stories I had written for young readers — primarily my kids and nieces. I had initially thought that my third book must be my Big Important Novel, because after all, aren’t writers expected to write a novel in order to be taken seriously? Perhaps, but when I embarked upon my journey to write my first novel I realized that I was not enjoying the process at all. I quickly returned to writing short stories and novellas, and I found the process flowed much more naturally. In the end, I determined that my short stories and novellas were not only more fun to write but were far better than any novel I could produce (at least for now).
I always try to write the type of book that I would purchase for myself if I were perusing through my neighborhood bookstore. I am quite fond of late 19th century and early 20th century story collections and anthologies. And I don’t just read those books for historical context — I genuinely appreciate that style of writing and those types of stories. Currently, I am working my way through a lovely 1936 book entitled The Bedside Book of Famous American Stories. As the title reveals, this book is an eclectic collection of all sorts of short stories and novelettes, including a few horror tales by Poe and some humor by Dorothy Parker and Mark Twain. Books like those are rarely published these days, and that’s a shame. I can only assume that there are many other short fiction fans like myself who are fatigued by the same old formulaic novels that consume valuable real estate in bookstores.
So, to all my fellow short fiction fans out there, I offer White Sail, Blue Seas as my humble contribution to our little niche of the literary world. Writing this book filled me with equal parts fear, excitement, dread, and exhilaration. But then again, isn’t that how life usually works?
J.S. Lender’s books are on sale now! — reefpointpress.weebly.com — Copyright © J.S. Lender / Reef Point Press 2021
Enjoy an excerpt from White Sail, Blue Seas here:
