Finis

I really hope you've enjoyed reading Assignment to Earth. It has been so nice to finally let other people read it after all this time. I welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. You can reach me by email at am_jenner@live.com, or anne@am-jenner.com. (My letterboxing friends know other ways to reach me.) You could always post comments here, as well. Sometimes, the lack of comments on the posts make me wonder if there's really anyone out there reading, or if this had been an exercise in futility. I do want to reassure you, though; there is another story coming. I'll start posting chapters tomorrow. This one is a suspense novel set in the modern world. It's named Inherit my Heart. As you can guess from the title, it's got a little romantic action going as a subplot, but I do want to reassure male readers that this is not a romance story whose only point is to get the couple together. It is a suspense story at heart. Inherit my Heart is an older story I've been working on off and on for probably something like thirty years. This is one of those "practice" stories authors write while they're learning what they're doing, and while I think it's a pretty good story, if you're really on your toes you might see some of the mistakes common to beginning writers sprinkled among its pages. I like it, and I do want to share it. If you liked Assignment to Earth, and if you like Inherit my Heart, then you might want to consider purchasing my better books. Links are on my website, http://www.am-jenner.com/. No, this isn't a high-power sales pitch, and my blog isn't going to turn into a "buy my books" whine-fest, it's just a suggestion that if you like the old stuff I wrote while learning, you'll probably like the better stuff that's published now that I know what I'm doing. I do have one question for you, for which I will post a poll over ----->>> there. During the course of posting these chapters, I was almost afraid to make any comments before or after the chapters, or even make any posts in between. There were a few things (which I forget now) that I had wanted to say. My question is this...when I'm in the midst of posting a serial, would it be too distracting to make posts on other subjects in between chapters? Please let me know what you think, I truly value your opinion. Anne

Reader Poll

I've enjoyed posting the short stories here, both the old ones, some of which have never been read before, and the new stories. (Don't worry, I'm still going to finish out the month long challenge.) So far this month, I've posted 30,295 words. In a way, it's been harder than doing a NaNoWriMo novel, because each day you have to come up with a new plot, and new characters, and a new setting, that all fit the prompt. During NaNo, you continue on each day where you left off, building on the previous day's work rather than starting over every day. While looking through my old things to see what short stories were available in case of I-Don't-Have-Time-To-Write-Today, I found some older novels. I'm about to do something that's either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid...or possibly both. Some of our earlier works are...unpublishable. They've been edited and polished to within an inch of their little lives, and still are not really...books worthy of printing on paper and asking money for. It's not that they're not good, it's just that they're not up to our current standard. We've grown a lot as authors, and learned a lot about the craft of writing since they were written. They probably could be "fixed", but then they wouldn't be the stories they are. We enjoy them the way they are, and would like to share them...free...here on our blog. What we propose is to post the stories, one chapter at a time, every couple of days, like an old-fashioned serial. For the first story, we offer you, our readers, a choice. You may recall in earlier posts I've mentioned that our novel Tanella's Flight began its life as a short story with a completely different plot. We're offering our readers the opportunity to read the earlier short story. the story is good, it won second runner-up in the Audiobook Club's Second Annual Short Story Contest. (They define "short" as under 27,000 words.) Earlier this month I posted an older short story called Perilous Patrol, which featured a character named Jenna. I mentioned in the heading that she also appears in the unpublished novel Assignment to Earth, and that her name is partially the origin of our pen name, A M Jenner. Although my partner and I had both been writing for a long time, Assignment to Earth was our first collaboration. I know we have a few readers out there, even if you don't comment very often. Please vote in the poll, and let us know which you'd like to read...the early version of Tanella's Flight or our first collaboration, Assignment to Earth. You can also tell us if you'd rather we chose something else, or if you don't want to spend time reading a serial published on a blog. Anne