Here we are; the eighth and final free short story as part of my re-releasing of my past Alan Draven Bitternest stories. I saved for last a key story that plays a very important part in the mythology of Bitternest. This story, “A Madman’s Atonement”, is the story in which I coined the name of my fictitious city in Louisiana, Bitternest, a foggy city of sunken dreams and drunken ambitions where supernatural events are a daily occurrence. The bulk of my writings would take place there, expanding its world and using its characters in recurring roles throughout my stories and novels. Initially when I started writing it in the spring of the year 2000, it was going to be a novel. But life happened and I got sidetracked and moved on to other things.
When I next picked it up in 2006, I didn’t think it had enough meat to be a novel so I turned it into a novelette/long short story that was way too long for magazines and anthos at the time. So it never got published. Fast forward to 2012 when I’m putting together my second short story/novella collection, Spooky Showcase, and I needed an extra story for that book. I went back to “Madman”, trimmed it, tweaked it and it finally saw the light of day. It quickly became a fan favorite. It’s a story about a serial killer in Bitternest. That’s all I’ll say about it. This iteration of it (2012) stands at 28 pages long, trimmed a good 7 or 8 pages from its initial length and it greatly improves the pacing. Here it is as a free PDF/readable online for your pleasure.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these past eight weeks of free stories. If you did, you can show your support by picking up a digital copy of my latest novel, Oblique, for about the same price as a cup of coffee. Contact me for details or skim through my previous posts for links on Amazon and Kobo. Over the next four weeks, every Thursday, I’ll be re-publishing the four novellas that were originally part of The Bitternest Chronicles (2010) and Spooky Showcase (2012). They’ll get a full release with brand new cover art and will be yours to own at the measly cost of a dollar each in PDF, Kindle, and Epub right here, on Amazon, and Kobo stores. Happy reading and I'll see you next week!
When I next picked it up in 2006, I didn’t think it had enough meat to be a novel so I turned it into a novelette/long short story that was way too long for magazines and anthos at the time. So it never got published. Fast forward to 2012 when I’m putting together my second short story/novella collection, Spooky Showcase, and I needed an extra story for that book. I went back to “Madman”, trimmed it, tweaked it and it finally saw the light of day. It quickly became a fan favorite. It’s a story about a serial killer in Bitternest. That’s all I’ll say about it. This iteration of it (2012) stands at 28 pages long, trimmed a good 7 or 8 pages from its initial length and it greatly improves the pacing. Here it is as a free PDF/readable online for your pleasure.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these past eight weeks of free stories. If you did, you can show your support by picking up a digital copy of my latest novel, Oblique, for about the same price as a cup of coffee. Contact me for details or skim through my previous posts for links on Amazon and Kobo. Over the next four weeks, every Thursday, I’ll be re-publishing the four novellas that were originally part of The Bitternest Chronicles (2010) and Spooky Showcase (2012). They’ll get a full release with brand new cover art and will be yours to own at the measly cost of a dollar each in PDF, Kindle, and Epub right here, on Amazon, and Kobo stores. Happy reading and I'll see you next week!
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