But Who's The Protagonist?

The month is half done, and I haven't gotten to one of the big goals I set for myself, namely putting out a story collection (either Female Protagonist or Geriatric Protagonist).  But Big Anklevich has gone crazy with his publishing, so I let his momentum carry me along, and am going to see if I can't put out both of them before the month is out.

When I came up with the Female Protagonist collection during the pandemic, I was going to include a Dead & Breakfast story in it (either "Meet the New Clerk" or "The Night Clerk"), but now I think I'll put "Undecorated" in there instead.  

I thought it would be slim pickings finding enough stories to fill up the collection, but with "Office Visit," "A Lovely Singing Voice," "Friends In Paradise," and "The Scottish Scene," I realized I was already close to 75,000 words, and that hadn't included the dozen or so stories I had been saving in 2021 when I first set out to put this together.

Holy moley, I've got too many stories with a female lead character (and I hadn't even CONSIDERED putting in long tales like "Not The Same" and "Ten Thousand Coffins").  Makes me think I should split up the stories into two volumes.  Can you believe that?

For Geriatric, I've got two novellas with old men as the leads, but I can't include both of them (it's already long enough with just one), and I was on the fence with a couple of stories, like "Old Man River" and "Last Call," which are about old dudes, but the POV characters are both young men.*  Also, one of the stories I'm considering using is a Christmas tale, and those ought to be in their own collection(s).

I really had my heart set on including either "A Mark on the Sky" with its years-later coda, or "Who Can It Be Now?" with its years-later coda.  But AMOTS is just too long (it would be half the collection in and of itself), and WCIBN isn't necessarily about an old man, just an ailing one (I based it on my uncle, who was only ten years older than me . . . am I old?).  I don't know what to do.  I also considered putting in "Newfound Fame," but it's nearly a novel too (and if someone would just give me money to expand it, I'm SURE I could get it past 40,000 words with no problem).

But here's the strange thing: in working on these two collections, even though it's eaten up my valuable sit-around-looking-at-Facebook time, has been kind of a rush.  In the same way as coming up with new cover art (for stories I published long ago, and stories I never bothered to publish) has been weirdly fun in a semi-creative sense, putting these together, organizing the stories in the order I think works best, and writing up introductions for them, has felt pretty good.  I hope that feeling lasts.

*I ultimately decided not to include those two, since the collection was running long anyway.