A brand new short story, Cast No Shadow, comes out on Friday and the usual jitters have overtaken me.
This is probably my favorite work that I’ve produced to date. I feel like it’s honest, raw, and asks some important questions. It’s undoubtedly the most gritty thing I have written, and I think the ending packs a good punch.
With Cast No Shadow, I did not set out to write anything other than the story that literally popped into my mind one day. Now, obviously, the thought that hit me was in great need of development, but I didn’t go into the writing process with any sort of agenda as far as its meaning, other than writing from my heart.
One of the truly fascinating things about writing fiction, to me, is that a story is a work of art. What I mean by that is that the value of it is in the eye of the beholder, or the reader in this case.
I sent the new story to several people over the last few months and it’s struck them all in different ways, which is interesting to me, because in some of the cases, these “pre-readers” mentioned getting things out of it that I did not even intend, but quickly realized were just under the surface of what I was thinking about and going through at the time it was written.
And that’s the beauty of it.
Art is not created in a vacuum. Every artist, performer, or writer, that pours themselves honestly into their work leaves something of themselves behind for others to see—perhaps things that they themselves did not even see.
So that’s the give and take of it.
I hope, if you do me the honor of reading it, that you’ll come away with something from it—even if at the very least you’re left with questions.