Where do your stories come from? To Tread the Narrow Path

This (and all of the posts in this series will be a repost from my Facebook and Instagram posting series). 

So, if you've already seen these, feel free to bypass. 

"The Shadowed Lands call to us all and eventually all will walk the Narrow Path."

Where do your stories come from?”

This is one of those things I think a lot of writers are asked. A lot.

I get this asked from friends and family alike, and I thought it would be fun to do a series of posts on where my stories come from and how I developed them. I'll kind of start in chronological order and go through what I've published and eventually make my way into what I've finished.

With that out of the way, I'll start this post series with To Tread the Narrow Path.

This story started its life as a short story written for a creative writing class circa 2000 and I wrote the entire 12K word story in one night. It was originally a historical fiction taking place in 1600s Japan during the fall of the civil war, but in 2014ish, I wanted to expand the story, but didn't want to follow history, so I did the logical thing and rewrote it into a fantasy novelella clocking in around 40K words. It follows an assassin's apprentice torn between avenging the death of his master and following his sworn oath.

This story deals a lot with the ideas of fate and expectations and what drives us. It was so much fun to write, and while I intended it to be a standalone story, I started a sequel last year (no ETA on finishing/publishing) titled The Knife Thin Road.

If anyone wants to read it, you can find it at Quiet City Books in Lewiston, at Bookshop.org/shop/QuietCityBooks, or from Amazon.