At the March 20, 2019, Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths meeting, I received an award for finishing the “2018 Desert Sleuths Short Story Writing Challenge.” The award signified the completion of twelve short stories, each with a minimum of 5,000 words, during 2018. The idea behind the challenge was to encourage writers to write. For me, the Challenge offered an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and try something different. Although I had written a few short stories previously, I had never written so many stories in such a short period of time. My first two thoughts: “Do I have enough ideas to write twelve short stories?” (I did…) and “Are those ideas any good?” (They were…). I surprised myself, and the rewrites will take some time, but I’m happy with how things turned out.
