The Owl on the Road to Medford

After three mystery novels with a mainstream mystery publisher--Poisoned Pen Press--I have embarked on a different fiction journey. I wrote a short story, it won a contest, and my muse said, "Let's do more of that!"

The original Owl on the Road to Medford was an experiment in voice and indirect story. (Yes, I just  made up that term.) You can read it HERE.  Calyx literary magazine picked it up after it won the 2014 Oregon Writer's Colony first prize for short fiction. Woo-hoo!

So I wrote six more short stories with the same narrator in the same setting--a wildlife rehabilitation clinic somewhere in western Oregon. I got to use a bunch of anecdotes from my zoo days and thereafter. The central character is an amalgam of men I have known and liked and sympathized with. Why a male voice? "Why not?" says the muse. Just because, say I.

These seven stories turned out to have a story arc, an adventure of the heart. Together, they seemed to me to make a novella--not as big as a novel, but not a short story collection in the usual sense.

As far as I can tell, publishers have no interest in novellas, so I set out to self-publish, as many authors are doing these days. After a short but intense struggle, The Owl on the Road to Medford is now available as an ebook. Click HERE to take a look. It soon will be available on paper, assuming that I figure out how to do that.

If you buy it and like it, do me a favor and post a little review. I'd appreciate it and my muse might, too.