Dark Sides Of The Truth
By: P.G. Barnett
Tags: Medium Publications, Henry And Sunny, Writing Life, Dark Sides Writing, Stories

This morning I decided to go home for a bit. It’s been quite some time since I visited, and when I got there, I soon began to relish in the memories of the place. There’d been so much joy here, so much creative pride filling the hallways, but like a lot of us are, I was soon filled with wanderlust.

And so I ventured out, seeking other places to hang my writer’s hat. Looking for other publications with more followers, different hosts of creatives like me to rub elbows with.

I found a few, and I stuck around, soon meeting a bunch of beautiful people and writers who I now call friends. I often read their work, and they read mine. These publications are wonderful communities filled with writers with whom to share stores.

But then sometimes you just have to make a change. And sometimes, the transformation involves returning to the place where it all started.

Almost two years ago, I created a home for all of my Henry James series and other pieces I’ve written. The publication was and is named Dark Sides of the Truth. The creation of the publication was unique because the character for which the series is named — Henry Allen James — lost his job at a fictitious publishing company called The Publishing Group (I know, how original, right?). Henry was then hired by the new editor-in-chief of a magazine known as The Dark Sides of the Truth.

I literally had a fictitious character writing a fictional story for a fictitious magazine housed in a real publication by the same name.

How cool is that?

Well, I thought it was at the time. I still do. The Dark Sides of the Truth magazine, known in its offices as “Dark Sides,” has published some pretty good stories if I do say so myself. But in real life, the publication, just like the magazine, struggled for followers and, of course, readers.

So I decided to farm out the Henry James stories to other publications with more massive reading bases. To claim that my motivation to move the series to another publication was based on anything other than greed would be ludicrous. I was hoping to get more eyes on the Henry James series. More eyes meant more money, of course.

Now, I’ve posted a lot of stories on other publications such as the Ascent, Rogues Gallery, The Startup (before they made a change to their mission statement) Out of Ideas Out of Time, The Reading Rhombus, Illumination, No Crime in Rhymin’ and a few more. But these were rants, rambles, and poems. Typically I always posted Henry James series or anything coming out of the fictitious offices at Dark Sides within the publication Dark Sides of the Truth.

But this morning I realized what I’d done was break the connection between the Henry James series stories and their home. I’d posted several Henry James stories in other publications.

And I realized that needed to change. I realized this morning after coming home to my publication that as long as Henry is writing stories for Dark Sides, his stories should be housed in the publication created in honor of his work.

It’s as simple as that.

So, this morning without any fanfare (that’s probably one of my most significant faults — I don’t self-promote worth shit), I removed all three episodes of my latest Henry James story and brought them home with me. And here they sit, amongst other Henry James stories where they should have been all along.

This decision wasn’t money-motivated for sure. Pulling a series story from a publication with over thirty thousand followers and placing it in a publication with only forty-seven followers may seem like an act of sheer lunacy. But somehow, it seems like the right thing to do.

I just added the fourth installment of The Final Mission to Dark Sides of the Truth, and I suppose those handfuls of die-hard Henry James readers will read it. I hope they do, and I hope they enjoy it.

As I said at the beginning of this story, I decided to go home, and I took this latest Henry James story with me. When I leave, and I will leave because I will want to post other types of stories in other publications, at least Henry, Sunny, and the rest of the characters will be among memories of past stories.

I know they’ll love it being back home.

Thank you so much for reading. You didn’t have to, but I’m certainly glad you did.

Let’s keep in touch: paul@pgbarnett.com

© P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.