Wednesday 2 October 2019

Re-using short stories

After my stories have been published* or placed into competitions, I put them together in themed collections. The latest of these, Slightly Spooky Stories III is out now. As you may have guessed these are 24 ghost stories and the like – not too scary as they're mostly womag type stories.

I've also produced four collections each of garden and family related stories, three of romances, one concerning time and one about work. You can find them all, plus my other books, here, if you fancy a nose – or even want to buy one or download the freebies.

*I can because I retain the right to do so. For those who give up all rights, this isn't an option.

What do you do with your stories after they've been published? (If you'd like to put a link in your comment, I'll add it to this post, so everyone else can see.)




Fay Knowles has produced Sunbeams from the Heart - A Collection of 12 romantic short stories.

10 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Cool! I remember the other two.

Keith Havers said...

I keep meaning to do this but never get round to it. I'm not sure if I have to get permission or inform the magazines they were originally published in.

Patsy said...

@ Alex – The titles have cleverly been planned to jog people's memories!

@ Keith – Unless it states you must in the contract, and assuming you've retained the appropriate rights, then you don't need to ask.

With DCT you have to ask if it's a collection of work all or mostly published with them, but you can use stories amongst others without checking first.

Fay Knowles said...

You do a wonderful job with this, Patsy! Of course, you've had a practically unprecedented number of short stories published and I am sure will continue to do so. Therefore you have a wonderful ongoing selection to draw on. I have several short stories in my book "Sunbeams from the Heart: A Collection of Twelve Romantic Short Stories" that were previously published in The Lady. You kindly said we could provide links, so here's Sunbeams' - mybook.to/SUNBEAMS (thanks, Patsy!).

Patsy said...

@ Fay – It does help that I've been writing for a fair while now, so can group stories into themes/genres. (Couldn't get you link to work, but I found the book – hope I get an extra point for that!)

Fay Knowles said...

@ Patsy - that's great! (Sorry about the link. Supposed to be universal. Here are the direct links to Sunbeams and Moonbeams - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B019BS227K and https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Y6V694F). Thanks!

yellowbutterfly said...

I was at a serial writers workshop and the fiction editor said it shouldn’t really matter about giving up copyright, as collections of short stories rarely sell well. The pleasure a writer gets should be in getting their work published in a magazine and read by thousands. I understood what she was saying - I suppose when you write many commercial stories that might be the case! But I work hard at my stories and at the moment each one is privately dedicated to someone! So I couldn’t give up the copyright. One day I want to publish a collection of stories I’ve had accepted by magazines. ( Unlike yours Patsy it won’t be many!)

Patsy said...

@ Fay – no problem!

@ Yellowbutterfly – That editor doesn't seem to realise that for some writers it isn't all about the money and nothing else. For me, and many others, retaining some rights to our work, especially the moral right to call it our own, is far more a matter of principal than of finance.

Haddock said...

OK, so the trick to it is not to give up all the rights.

Fay Knowles said...

Thank you so much, Patsy, for featuring my book "Sunbeams from the Heart: A Collection of Twelve Romantic Short Stories". I really appreciate this!