Under a brand-new pen name, I’m working on a collection of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short-stories, novellas, and novelettes. I’m trying to figure out the right order to put the stories in, and it’s harder than you might think. 

If you look at the contents page of Baker’s Dozen, you’ll see that I made it look kind of like an hourglass — longest titles at the top and bottom, shortest in the center. That was wholly aesthetic in nature, and while I’m happy with the first story (“A Spoonful of Attitude”), I think the second one (“Any Port in a Storm”) may have come too early in the collection. It has spanking in it, but it’s not as much about spanking as the other stories in the volume. I probably should’ve saved it for near the end. But that book came out about ten years ago; it’s a little too late for regrets now. 

My problem with the new collection is that my favorite story in it has a pretty esoteric title, and I’m not sure if I want it leading off the book. I mean, I love the story, and I think it’s a good story, but the title (which I also really like) doesn’t necessarily spark joy. 

Usually when I write short-story collections I’ll put an author’s note at the end of each one; maybe for this one I’ll put a little teaser at the start, under the title, so when people see the title they’ll also see what the story is about and want to keep reading. Or I could change the title, but I spent a lot of time workshopping it. I guess we’ll see. 

The collection has five fantasy stories (one of which is alternate history steampunk without steam, so it counts but it’s iffy), one supernatural horror story, two non-supernatural horror stories (one is really more like suspense than anything), a fantasy/horror story that I really like but don’t quite know where to put, and three pure science fiction stories. I think what I’m going to do is put the sci-fi stories at the start or the end; one of the sci-fi stories will be the title of the collection, and I think it’s a good story to end with. I don’t want to start with it; it doesn’t feel aesthetically pleasing in that regard. One of the other sci-fi stories would be a good start, and it has a good title, but again, it’s not my favorite story in the entire collection. 

I have plenty of time to work on the story order — I’m only on draft 2 or 3 of most of the stories; only one is in its completed, ready-to-publish state. But when I’m sitting at work, bored, looking at my Google Drive folders and the titles of the stories, I get excited thinking about people reading and enjoying them. That’s when I start wondering about the order of the stories and what would be the best way to address it. 

I bet when I publish the book I still won’t be fully happy, but then, is any writer ever fully happy with their work? Or do they always think it could be better? 

Hint: it’s the latter.