During the course of writing To Trust the Wolf, I diverged from my main plot and characters to chase a story idea that popped in my head one day. Sophie's voice just came to me one afternoon, and most of her story was penned that day. Originally, she was stitched into the main plot, but through the course of the revisions, it became apparent that she just didn't really belong with the book, and was eventually dropped.
I held onto the text, though, and after the book was finished and published and all that nonsense, I came back to Sophie and her story. I polished it up so that she could stand on her own, revised it until I was happy with it. It's an odd thing, learning to write a novel after years of writing short stories, to then go back to the short story format and make it work once again.
Sophie's story, The Violin, is now available for free through Smashwords for every ebook format, and in HTML for those who just want to read it online. It is a short story, so it won't take you too long. I'm pretty happy with it, and I hope you enjoy it.
Also, the story is available through Amazon, but Amazon won't allow me to price it for free, so it's currently sitting at 99 cents. You can help me change that, though. On the Amazon page for the story, there's a link that allows you to tell Amazon that you've seen it available for a lower price. If you click that link and provide Amazon with the link to the Smashwords file, Amazon will eventually price match it and make the story available for free. This would be really, really helpful, so please, if you've got a minute, take the time to follow that link.
