About the Aftermythos
What happens after a story ends?
Do the characters cease to exist? Hopefully not. But if they go right on living, then what becomes of them? What legacies did they leave, and what worlds did they build?
For years, thousands of people have asked this question. Or perhaps it was only me. Either way, I decided to answer it. Hence, the Aftermythos—an interconnected multiverse of stories that builds on fairy tales, myths, and folklore to create something new, exciting, and occasionally scary.
At the end of the day, however, it’s not about a grandiose concept or an intricate storyworld; it’s about a handful of characters whom many readers have grown to love over the years. So long as people keep wanting to hear stories about those characters, I’ll keep writing them until there are no more left to be told.
You probably have questions. I have taken the liberty of extracting them from your mind through long-range telepathy and answering them below.
Frequently Asked Questions
When will your next book come out?
The best answer I can give is the somewhat-unhelpful old chestnut, “When it’s ready.” Life is unpredictable, and I generally try to avoid confirming exact release dates until the book in question is actually done and ready for upload. To avoid disappointing my readers, I don’t share any information on works in progress. But so long as people keep reading my books, I should be able to keep on writing them at a fairly steady rate. If you’re a fan, you can help by spreading the word about them to fellow readers, your immediate family, distant cousins, and random strangers whom you kidnap off the street and duct-tape to a chair until they have listened to all of my audiobooks in one sitting. Just a suggestion.
How many more Aftermythos books will there be?
For the moment, I can confirm that there will be at least ten books total in the complete Beaumont and Beasley series, and that there will be at least three books total in the Crockett and Crane series. Further installments and/or spinoffs will largely depend on how well these confirmed books perform over time, and on whenever I decide that certain storylines and character arcs have run their course.
What order should I read your books in?
First of all, you really shouldn't have ended a sentence with a preposition. I am disappointed in you. Second, I have a handy reading order page just for you, you poor benighted preposition-abuser. It may look slightly complicated at first glance, but I’ve marked which books are actually the most crucial to the main storylines. Various and sundry short stories have only been included for completionists; you don’t have to read all the supporting material if you don’t want to.
Will you read and review my book?
For the foreseeable future, I’m probably not going to be able to read and review titles from fellow indie authors. My current schedule just doesn’t allow me enough time for it. As such, I’m generally not going to be able to do cross-promotional events with other authors for the time being. I’m always very grateful to those who offer to include me in such events, however. Just don’t be offended if I can’t join in; it’s a general time-management policy I’m adhering to at the moment rather than anything directed at you or your books in particular. I will always love you.
How can I get in touch with you?
The best way to contact me is via this email address: kyle@aftermythos.com. While I do have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages for the Aftermythos, I don’t generally interact with people a great deal on those platforms. They’re for promoting my business rather than my personal use, so I don’t regularly check direct messages on them. I do try to respond to emails within 24 hours, however.
About Kyle Robert Shultz
Kyle Robert Shultz is the creator of the Aftermythos, an interconnected collection of stories set in an alternate universe where fairy tales and mythology are history. Shultz is a completely ordinary human being with no remarkable qualities whatsoever. Accounts suggesting that he is a dangerous wizard exiled from a parallel reality, a cleverly-disguised magical creature passing off the history of another world as original fiction, a mysterious trickster entity described in the folklore of a circumscribed region of Wales, or a pseudonym adopted by three talking otters stacked up in a trench coat should be dismissed as not entirely accurate.