April Update
Free Story of the Month - Shelly
Stats
This month has been a big one for Amazing Stories! Both of the my stories went over 1000 episodes read on Amazon and they continue to be among the top ranked in their categories. For example, as of today:
After It’s Over:
#1 in Alternate History
#1 in Post-Apocalyptic
#1 in Pandemic
#3 in Survival
#7 in Dystopian
#24 in Adventure
#25 in Thriller
The Force of Magic:
#1 in Super Powers
#9 in Female Protagonist
#21 in Young Adult
#21 in Coming of Age
#37 in Magic
#46 in Adventure
#66 in Fantasy
Vella Madness 2022
With your help, After It’s Over, defeated 63 other stories to be named the 2022 Kindle Vella Madness Champion. This was a fun 3 weeks of voting for our favorite stories and I’m very excited about the additional exposure and readers this competition helped to bring in. As of April 25th, there are now 132 readers following this story on Kindle Vella. The complete story is available there or for all paying subscribers here on Substack. This story should be completed by early Fall 2022 with an ebook and paperback version coming by the end of the year.
The Force of Magic
The newest story has become very popular right away. Some of my favorite books growing up were classic fantasy books, such as the Lord of the Rings and Terry Brooks’ Shannara series. This book is the first in a trilogy of it’s own, and has already found an active readership, with 117 readers following the story on Amazon. All episodes will be released here for paying subscribers and on Vella. I hope you’ll check it out today
Author Interview
A big thanks to Julie Gilbert for interviewing me and posting it on her blog. You can read the entire thing here. The Vella community is a growing supportive community and it is very common for authors to support each other in many different ways. Follow me on IG and Twitter for some of my recommendations.
Free Story of the Month - Shelly - After It’s Over
Warning: This free episode occurs before episode 3 of After It’s Over, and provides some background on this character, in the summer of 2023. The first 3 episodes are available here on Substack and on Kindle Vella for free.
Shelly Tran was starting to lose hope altogether. Her business kept her in Chicago. Even though it was a web development company, it was easier being in the place where all of her contacts were, including her business partner, Kara Dean. Kara and her met while working at another tech company and they decided to move to Kara’s hometown and start their own company when the craziness of California finally overwhelmed the perpetual sunshine for both of them. Shelly grew up in California and was excited to finally break away from her family and live life in a new context.
That was over 6 years ago and before the pandemic, everything was roses. The two ladies’ startup exceeded all their expectations and by the start of 2020, their growing business had more than 20 employees. Shelly’s knack for finding talented young developers and Kara’s salesmanship kept them with an ever growing list of clients. That all started to change in March of 2020. When they heard ‘two weeks to slow the spread’, no one was very worried. Sure, there were scary reports out of Italy and other places, but they all believed everything would be back to normal soon.
That presupposition couldn’t have been more wrong. By the summer of 2020, some of their smaller clients began to cancel their contracts. These were a variety of businesses, all of which were closed down by lockdown policies. Shelly knew it wasn’t fair to them and she didn’t blame them in the least. These companies’ biggest competitors, most of all Amazon, continued to operate as normal and saw record sales. She expected to see their business come back in time.
By the winter of that first year, slow business began to hit their bottom line. Shelly knew that they were now over-staffed for the amount of work on the table, but she was reluctant to let people go during the pandemic. Surely, a return to normal was just around the corner…
In March of 2021, she completed her overview and sat down with Kara to go over the bad news.
“It’s time to face reality, we have over 40% less business than this time last year, but we still have a full staff. If this trend continues, we won’t be able to pay anyone’s salary. Right now, we’re paying people with nothing to do. I know they are glad to have the salary, but we can’t keep this up. We have to let people go.”
Even Kara, ever the optimist, couldn’t find a silver lining in this cloud, “I just can’t believe how bad it is. There are no new contracts to be had and when I reach out to some of our former clients, I find their lines disconnected and their company email addresses don’t exist anymore. These are addresses tied to websites we built. Good companies that were once strong and healthy and optimistic are just gone. I can’t argue with you anymore, how do we choose?”
Shelly showed her a list on her laptop with 12 names on it.
“So many…?”
“I know, but what can we do. The governor keeps extending polices that impact businesses like the ones we serve. We built our company on serving small businesses well, but the last year has destroyed many of them. I don’t think it’s going to get better anytime soon.”
Shelly’s words were prophetic. While some of the lockdown measures were eventually lifted, high inflation and supply chain issues pushed the cost of everything higher. Most companies were forced to make deep cuts and their services were usually seen as a luxury they could no longer afford. By the end of 2022, all their employees were let go and Shelly and Kara were doing what little work remained themselves. Their dream died a slow death, staying on life support for a long time, but in 2023, their business, like so many others before them, closed it’s doors for good.
Kara went to live with her parents in a small town outside of Chicago and Shelly stayed in town to close up shop. She owned her house outright and her bank accounts weren’t empty, but so much of her life was invested in the business, she now felt the gaping hole left behind by its absence. She wanted to go see her parents as well, but every time she called them, they discouraged her from traveling back. Even after all this time, they were still deathly afraid of the virus and had isolated themselves completely. In the summer of 2023, Shelly received a different kind of phone call from them.
“Shelly, things are getting bad here. How are they there?”
“Bad? How?” Shelly asked.
“The grocery delivery business has shutdown and we can’t find anyone to bring us food and supplies. We’ve tried ordering some things online, but the estimated deliveries are weeks away and many things are out of stock. We finally went out to try and do some shopping and many things have been burnt or looted. We were fortunate to find one store with some supplies and we stocked up on pasta, rice and other dry goods, but there was no meat or produce. We’re really scared.” Her mom said.
“I’m going to make my way there. I’ll let you know when I’ve worked it out.”
For the first time, her parents didn’t argue about her coming. Instead, they just told her they loved her and asked her to be careful. Shelly was shocked when she looked up flights and found that there were few flights left and the ones headed where she needed to go were all full. She checked the airlines’ websites, but was met with messages posted weeks before apologizing for limited service. She kept trying for another week, but the options never improved, in fact, they were worse every day.
She finally decided to try and drive out of the city, but things were getting as bad here as they were in California. She tried three gas stations, but there was no fuel. She was going to drive out and see if she could make it to somewhere that had fuel when she saw a barricade and what looked like a checkpoint with armed men. She quickly turned around and headed back for home. No businesses looked open and every night she heard sounds like gunfire in the distance. Shelly was scared. Most of her contacts in Chicago were from her business and she didn’t know who to call for help, but she knew she needed to get out of the city before it was too late.