Once upon a time in the Liaden Universe®....

Yes, it's almost that easy to get started, almost that easy to fall into reverie and begin a new story. Some stories are long and of course, some stories are short. We mention that because, over the years, we've been asked three questions over and over:

• "Why are you wasting time writing Liaden short stories when you could be working on another novel?"
• "If you already knew this story, why didn't you put it in the novel?"
• "Hey this (name of story) could make a novel, couldn't it?"

Remember all this, we'll get back to it.

We're both natural short story writers. We both started out writing short stories, and we both sold short stories before we sold anything else. One thing to keep in mind is that short stories are short. This is not a tautology but an important observation.

Writers, and readers too, sometimes want to deal with a particular idea, image, or character without being overwhelmed by too much story, too much information, too much distraction. Sometimes a short story just comes out of nowhere and grabs a writer by the shoulder and says "Write me now!..." and it's doable. It's very difficult to write a novel in the same state of passion, yessir.

Some stories are just not meant to be novels, no matter how hard you write and how many side plots you bring in. You've probably read books where the story, the real story, was nearly buried by side issues, stew, and the description of the beautiful brocades. We try not to make a short story fill a novel's shoes, and having written to shorter lengths as well as longer we know that stories really do have a natural length.

To the questions people ask:

First, we don't consider time spent writing short stories to be wasted. There are times we write short stories to explore the back story behind a character or a situation: in that case we want to know more so that we can know the details when we're writing a novel or another story.

But, since the Liaden Universe® has thousands of readers, as well as two writers, there are times we write stories because you, the readers, want to know more. Take "Breath's Duty," which was written in response to a question at a convention: "How did Clonak and Shadia survive the attack at Nevlorn?" Since, ahem, one of the writers also wanted to know that...the story was written and appeared in chapbook. Not an example of wasted time.

Editors also "start" stories sometimes. Like the novella we've been writing for Jim Baen's Universe, a request comes in: "Do you have a Liaden story for us?" Certainly not wasted time.

Sometimes a request comes in from an anthology editor. Lee Martindale asked us to write a story about an atypical kind of person for a Liaden story—a large person, even a fat person. "Naratha's Shadow" came together at breakfast at a Bob Evans while we were at ShevaCon; and no, that wasn't wasted, either.

Sometimes we get very exact requests from editors: the most exact being "This House," written for the Janis Ian/Mike Resnick anthology Stars, based on songs written by Janis Ian. In this case, Janis asked specifically for a Liaden Universe® story based on her song "This House." Whoa—not an easy story to write, but definitely not a waste of time.

Back to that second question, then. "If you knew this, why didn't you put it in the novel?"

In some cases, as with "Breath's Duty," we— well, one of us— had only the vaguest outline of the story in our head. Had we tried to shoehorn it into Carpe Diem we would have thrown off the tension and balance of the books that followed. "Breath's Duty" is one of a number of stories that needed not to go in the book where it was first thought of.

Now, a very difficult question: "Hey, this story could make a novel couldn't it?"

Well, sometimes. In one case, Balance of Trade, yes, it could — and it did. Here we get back to the natural length discussion; we really do think that some stories ought to be a certain length. "Balance of Trade" the short story felt finished to us, but that story was originally written when a magazine editor came to us with money in hand and said "I'd like a Liaden Universe® story for my next issue," At about the same time we'd had this character-kid hanging around looking for a chance to get into a story edgewise. Once the short story was finished, though, Jethri kept poking his head into our dinner conversations, suggesting that he had other tricks up his sleeves, other fires to feed, more backstory—and that he had connections and was going to use them. Long story short, as they say, we caved and put Jethri to work.

So sometimes, but not always, the basis of a novel might be found in a short piece, but we don't consider any story we commit to the page wasted. If we can find the novel later, we're willing to work that out. If we don't have time for that novel, right now, though, at least the key part of the story has been worked out for us—and for our readers—and hasn't been lost.

Collected here then, are many of the shorter stories of the Liaden Universe®. It may be possible that an individual story or two may depend on you having read a book or another story, but generally not. It may be possible that what you find here will exactly answer a question that you've been meaning to ask us.

As to us? We're not giving up on shorter stories just because some people only read novels. When the story arrives, it gets written, long or short.

Once upon a time in the Liaden Universe®....
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller,
June 30, 2007