Second Look: Thank You For Ten

tyunglebower ♦ April 30, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

My short story collection, Thank You For Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theatre was not the first idea I had to publish fiction. It was related to that, however, and ultimately was the first thing I ever published.

This collection of ten short stories not only share a setting with one another, but with my first novel, Flowers of Dionysus, which I will talk about next time.

I was both woefully and perhaps blissfully ignorant at how ineffective I would be at marketing and promotion. Or, I overestimated how much interest the setting would generate among readers. In any event, I wrote and published this collection as a companion piece to build interest in my upcoming first novel.

It was also my first ever experience was publishing my own work. It was a far more meticulous and thus nerve wracking process back then as compared to what I do now. But that’s boring to talk about.

The setting of the stories and the subsequent novel is small community theatre called The Little Dionysus Playhouse. The characters call it the LDP for short. It’s an amalgam of the various theatre venues I’ve performed in over the years.

As a long time volunteer actor I have come to realize that each theatre has its own distinct personality, based on resources, material produced, and various factors, not the least of which is the venue itself. Ask a one who has done more than a little bit of theatre, and they will tell you that the venue is often a character itself in any show. I wanted to establish the particulars of the LDP in both the stories and the novel.

I did so, but as it turned out Thank You For Ten became as much about what theaters have in common as it did the specifics of a specific place.

In these stories I explored such tribulations as not having enough crew to run a show, people flaking out, the eerie but exciting feeling of being in a theatre by ones self at night, almost-universal presence of summer classes, and just the overall pains-in-the-ass that seem unique to the theatre world. (How and why do we need to carry a boat through town for this production? And if we do have to, why is the place not unlocked as was promised on the day we took to do so??)

The stories nod towards various genres, even if they would not officially qualify in the minds of respective fandoms. I wanted to give a taste of different types of stories with a theatre as the setting. To put it another way, I wanted to give theatre kid/nerds among my readers a few minutes of sci-fi, a few minutes of suspense and so on, without having to divert from the recognizable (to them) glories and foibles of the theatre, with an emphasis on amateur production.

I had hoped when writing these, as well as the main novel, to appeal especially to theatre nerds, as I mentioned. 85% of my friends and allies are so because of theatre, and I figured it was an excellent setting to begin my foray into publishing fully realized fiction. (That, and having a sort of vision, but that is for next week’s post.)

To be fair, some of my theatre people did read the collection. But not many. At least not in its initial run. It is not too late of course for anybody with an e-reader to check out these stories. (The link is above at the start of this post.) Yet at the time I thought I could capture the niche of readers that were also the niche of theatre. We are a particular breed after all, we theatre geeks. My hope was to compose a sort of love letter to theatre people that would also make an enjoyable set of stories for those who came into the collection not knowing a proscenium from a prologue. The point was to wink at those who knew, and shake hands with those who did not.

Did I succeed?

That of course depends on one’s definition. I still get about one download a year for the collection. Yet ti did not, thus far, find its way to the theatre geek crowd as I had hoped. I can’t say if this is because I, once again, am just not effective promoter despite my best exhausting efforts, or if theatre geeks do not in fact want to read about the adventures of other theatre geeks as much as I assumed.

If I choose the optimistic approach, I can tell myself they prefer hard copies, and I only ever made this collection available in ebook form. Or perhaps many have enjoyed it, but have left no ratings or reviews for same.

When it comes to title matching vibe, this may be my best choice, honestly. It fits, it has multiple meanings, and calls out (in theory) to those in the know.

As with my entire back catalog, it remains available. If you should see this, and want to visit the LDP in shorter bits, with literally and figuratively a diverse cast of characters all doing their best to make promising enjoyable theatre, download a copy today.

And if you like it, especially if you’re a theatre type, do leave a rating. If 100 theatre people read and enjoy it, I am just as happy if not more so than if 200 people who do not know theatre do so.

But all of course are welcome.