YEARS AGO, WHEN I FIRST LAUNCHED MY WEBSITE, I wanted to do something that would thank readers for their support. I decided to try my hand at e-serials—writing a novella and posting chapters as I went. I asked readers what they wanted, and they said “a story about the guys.” The result was Savage, a prequel to Bitten covering the rather unique childhood of the male lead, Clayton Danvers.
The e-serials became an annual tradition. I’d poll readers, then write them a story. Savage was followed by a sequel, Ascension. Then that was followed by another prequel to Bitten, Beginnings, which tells the story of how Clay met Elena. In 2005, I changed tracks and instead offered twelve short stories, again on topics or characters chosen by readers. The next year was my first “non-prequel” novella: The Case of El Chupacabra, an investigation by my spellcasters Paige Winterbourne and Lucas Cortez.
As much as readers seemed to appreciate the online fiction, the number-one question I got was: When will they be in book form? I said that I’d only publish them if I could make it a charitable endeavor. I expected it would take years before I’d be in a position to do that, but in 2007, my publishers made me an offer.
The first volume, Men of the Otherworld, was all about my werewolf Pack guys. This is volume two, Tales of the Otherworld, and it covers a lot of the stories that readers heard mentioned in the books, but never got a chance to see. There’s a new story, too. I polled readers for their choice of characters to narrate the new novella, and the winner was Eve Levine. Bewitched tells the tale of her romance with Kristof.
All of my proceeds from these volumes are going to World Literacy of Canada, a nonprofit voluntary organization dedicated to promoting international development and social justice (www.worldlit.ca). The stories were originally intended as a gift to readers and now they’ll be “re-gifted” to a worthy cause. And there is still plenty of free fiction on my Web site and maybe more to come in the future!