How stories expand

 When I wrote "The Love of the Sea,"  I started out with the idea with the idea of a short ghost story with a romantic theme. I had a reputation for good ghost stories and had not done a romantic one before, so I thought I would try. I sent it to a friend for her free read section on the blog and had some nice comments and my friend told me that the story was very popular. I had the thought maybe I can expand it a little; never imagining that I would expand a 1,200 word story into a novel, but that does appear to be what is happening as the story is now over 26,000 words and still going strong. I think my largest collection to date is the first Chronicles book at around 30,000 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BEDMSO which is a series of short stories introducing the characters who appear in the forthcoming book 2.