By Debbie Viguié

I am not a short story person.  I don’t tend to read them and I hate writing them.  It’s ironic, but writing a short story takes me longer than writing a novel.  Also ironically when I do write a short story most people comment (correctly) that it sounds like the setup for a series of books.  It always is because I think about big, large plots that can’t be completely condensed down into a few thousand words.

What makes Latchkeys so cool is that even though I was technically writing a short story, it was more like writing a chapter in a novel.  There’s an entire world we have built, rich characters that we’re just starting to explore on paper, and miles and miles of plot much of which has only yet been hinted at.  It is awesome.  I basically wrote chapter three for this epic story that I helped to craft the outline for.

I hope that’s how it reads to people.  When you have multiple writers it can be difficult to control tone and voice and make something flow smoothly.  One of the points of creating the Latchkeys universe was a bunch of us wanted to do something as a group showcasing our ability to work together and our ability to shine on our own.  I think we’ve managed to do that.  There are continuing style elements that let the readers know this is all the same big story.  There are also ways and places in which we can shine individually and bring our own creative drives to our individual chapters, er, stories.

So, start from the beginning.  Keep reading until the end.  Because let me tell you, this is one heck of a thrill ride.