When I wrote "Unheroic", my first inclination was to slap a bunch of short stories together and call it a book. Luckily, my editor (Ed) talked me out of it. He argued that short story collections should be centered around a central theme. This friggin' sucked for me because I wrote a bunch of stories with no particular theme in mind. I'd just wake up too early in the morning, "puke" a story into existence, and then work on it until it was worthy.
I had a sizable herd of stories and spent a lot of time going from theme to theme. I think I had gone through four or five of them before "Unheroic" came up. The theme I chose was simple: a collection of short stories about characters saving the day who have NO business calling themselves heroic. Imagine a story where a demon from Hell saves the day? Or the damsel in distress? It's a quick, easy-to-explain theme which piqued a lot of people's curiosity and ended up helping my initial sales.
So, when compiling your collection, think of a theme. Make it ungeneric. Don't let it be bland. It's gotta be something you can explain quick and easy-like. And tuck in enough stories to give the reader a reasonably-sized book of tales to read. I put 36 into mine, for a little over 200 paperback pages. If you're writing your theme-based stories from scratch, I'm impressed. I'd rather write over 100 stories, size them up, and then work out a theme later. There's more flexibility that way . . . and more room for mistakes (God knows I made a few).
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