The Short Stories of R. Anthony Mahan: An Introduction

It's good to hear my most recent short story, "The Day God Came Back", has been so well-received. (If you haven't read that already, shame on you! Go do it!) With it, I've received some requests to share my other short stories, which were previously available online before I took them down. It sounds fair enough. The stories are too short for publication (not that I intended any of them to be published to begin with), my publisher suggested that free samples of my writing can help raise interest, and I'm certainly not gaining anything by keeping them to myself unread. At the same time, though, I feel I should give a...disclaimer of sorts to anyone wishing to read them.

These five stories are all fairly old; each of them predate my publishing deal with FutureWord. The oldest of the five, "The Long Winter", was written before I had even finished the first draft of "But Whether Men Do." The point to this is that when I wrote these stories, I was extremely new to writing. I still am new to writing, mind you, but even now I look back at these stories and realize that I was a total amateur at the time, and it shows. Many of these stories existed as little more than a way for me to vent off steam, permanent reminders of a bad mood I was in 2-3 years ago. In this respect I'm particularly ashamed of "From the Machine." Although I'm still not a religious person in any sense of the word, in retrospect I find the message of that story to be rather ignorant.

There's also the fact that, since I never intended for these stories to be published, I didn't apply the amount of care I did for "But Whether Men Do," or any future writing which I plan to be read by the masses. Each of these stories were churned out quickly, with little to no revisions. For each one, the first draft is the final draft. And you know what Hemingway said about first drafts.

If you've read this far, I know what you're thinking. "Why is this guy going on about how terrible these stories are? If he wants people to pay attention to him as a writer, this isn't the way to do it." But in fact, this is why I'm bringing all of this up. I'd like to think that I've come far as a writer since I've written these short stories, and I'll develop even more in the future. When you're reading them and find anything poorly-done, just keep in mind I was young and inexperienced at the time. If you like the stories, great. If you don't like them, please try not to let it impact your thoughts on me as a writer.

That said, here are the "lost" short stories of R. Anthony Mahan: "The Long Winter," "From the Machine," "Peace For All Mankind," "It's All Uphill From Here!", and "It's Inhuman!" Enjoy.