Aside from the redrafting and republication of my debut novel, Dead Man’s Hand, I’ve had another project that has been stealing a lot of my attention. However, it required a little more expertise than my writing, so instead of backing down and giving up on the destination, I dove headfirst into the handful of skill sets needed to bring it to the world. A couple of those skills weren’t entirely foreign, yet they still required a substantial amount of work. Despite putting in plenty of effort, I’m still not where I was with them previously. However, I’ve leveled up those skills to be serviceable for this new project.
While the old skill was in a workable position, I needed to work with one of my older pieces of flash fiction. As a result, I sat down and thumbed through my digital writing journal and thought about my entire backlog. However, it didn’t take me long to dismiss all the stories I’ve written for my patrons. After all, they pay for exclusive content. But as I continued to flip through the stories, a stray memory of my dad bubbled up. Despite him living to see two of my books being published, there was a piece of flash fiction that he loved more than anything else I wrote. At least, that’s what he told me. With the end of the year staring down at me, it makes sense to honor his opinion in this new endeavor, so allow me to reintroduce Journey of Thanks.
For those who remember the old page, you’ll note that it didn’t use to have a cover image. Typically, I only create those for the flash fiction I post for my Ko-Fi, Wattpad, and Patreon exclusives. However, for this project I needed to backfill a cover for this story. After finding the perfect starting image on Unsplash, thank you Cristian Palmer for the perfect shot, I tweaked it into my story’s cover.
With another piece to this journey complete, I needed to turn my attention to the project’s last step. Unfortunately, it made me realize how raw Journey of Thanks was. Despite the initial frustration, I pushed it out of my mind and dove into a rewrite for this older story. During the process, I strove to massage the narrative into a more refined version of itself. After all, I didn’t want to alter my dad’s favorite tale to where it was unrecognizable, rather I wanted to refine it into its best possible form. So I pulled out the published version and went to work cleaning it up.
Click here to read the updated version of Journey of Thanks.
Upon completing the rewrite, I took the fresh copy and proceeded with my agenda. Before anyone complains about the lack of information, yes, I’m keeping the details of this project close to the chest. However, it comes with a due date, January 4th 2025. Hopefully, I’ll complete the remaining bit of this project by the end of this week, which means there will be an announcement upcoming.
By the way, the due date coincides with my upcoming book signing. So make sure you update your calendar for both events. Now the signing is limited to those who live near the Barnes & Noble located at 15000 Potomac Town Place Suite 160 Woodbridge, VA, click here for directions. Despite the limited nature of the signing, the upcoming project will be available to everyone, so stay tuned for all the details.