Mushroom: Blog

Thanks to a suggestion from somebody else, I have created a "Dark Tales Universe", which is where I am going to be putting all of those stories, along with others that fit into that and were not previously. So stories like "Once Again, For The First Time" and "Little Sister's Surprise" can now be amongst the others. Where is always where those really belonged, as thematically they were Dark Tales, even though I wanted to post them individually.

And I noticed that they also have been getting a lot more views and comments than they ever had as part of an anthology. I even chuckled when one said they loved the twist in the ending of one.
And I realized it was a story almost a year old, it had simply been hidden in an anthology was all.

Well, I have decided that "Anthology Stories" really do not work here, so I have killed my "Dark Tales" series. And I am in the process of going over them again and posting them as individual stories.

It was an interesting idea, but I think that not many got that it was not a single story, but over a dozen different stories, each one very different than the last. This way, hopefully more will be able to find the individual stories they like.

Oh, and if you have read them before, you might want to look again after I post them. I also had another unposted anthology I called "Light Tales", and in some cases I am combining the two. So if you think you read the story already, look farther down and you may be surprised that it ends in a completely different way than it had before.

In other words, some of the previous "Dark Tales" are not so dark anymore.

I wanted to throw something out there, because some have been starting to pick it up from my writings.

A long running joke among my friends is that I am a "Radically Militant Moderate". I believe in compromise, and have no strong attachment to either side politically. And am in most ways "Conservative" by inclination, but rather "Liberal" in a great many other ways.

And my writing often reflects this viewpoint. Of course, I am also almost never "in your face" about it. Instead, I write my little stories and tell my little tales, dropping little breadcrumbs here and there. And hope that some might read it again, and see the layers I had crafted, like an onion. Many not even seen until after the story is done.

I just wrote one I called "Sally the Welder". Another period piece, set during WWII. And like many, one I purposefully built into the narration, to try and cause people to explode or explore their preconceptions. And spoilers ahead, in case you want to read the story before going any farther.

One, in what is actually unusual for me I actually did do a "reveal" of the race of the narrator early on (most times it is never obvious, or much later if it is). But I have to wonder how many read the first several paragraphs, not even realizing it. Dropping a few "vague accidental clues" that the narrator became pregnant, but never saying it overtly until much later.

My family is from the South, and I have lived there. And I always hate it when bigots just assume that they are nothing but a bunch of racist rednecks. Yes, there are still some like that, but they are very much the minority. There were ALWAYS good people anywhere, that did not give a damn about race. And worked in their own ways to eliminate such behaviors. Like a doctor in my story. Who worked at 2 "Black Hospitals", one of them a teaching hospital. Yes, he has wealth and a comfortable life. But he is having to work at basically 2 jobs to do so, where other doctors likely only had to work at 1 to get the same level of success.

This to me is my "radicalism". I do not get into people faces and scream at them, it's just not my style. Instead, I craft these little stories, in the hopes that at least some who read them take a moment and actually think. I have no interest in seeing people "woke". I just want them to think for themselves, and live with open eyes, and realize that there are a great many layers. And like in an onion some layers may be rotten, most layers are just fine.

OK, Book III is now fully up.

For anybody that was current prior to my splitting the story, you can pick up at Chapter 44, which has now been posted.

As I have been discussing in the comments at the end of the story, I decided to break up Part II into Part II and Part III.

The end of Part II is now when Pete has the accident, and everything after is in Part III. At this time, that means 43 chapters that were previously in Part II have been moved into Part III. So once you see Chapter 44 posted, that will be new content.

And there was an issue with some of the chapters I posted, so am now reposting them one at a time. So please be patent as I upload them one at a time manually, but I promise that as soon as they are up I will post 44 and shorty 45 so there is new content.