I don’t always connect new stories to my wider fictional universe. Most of the stories in the Antonio Van derr Wahl/Singularity cycle, for instance, only connect to that universe. In the same way, most of the stories in the CNE cycle only connect to the universe where it is set.
That having been said, all of my published novels and a lot of my short stories are set in the same Transdimensional Authority/Multiverse (which is to say, they share characters, institutions or other story elements). For instance, Noomi Rapier and Crash Chumley, who are introduced in my first novel, also appear in short stories such as “The Writer Did It!” Transdimensional Authority Ambassador Quentin Trentino is the main character in the short story “The Colour-coded Threat Level of Magic.” Etc.
This is a very organic process. Invariably, the initial inspiration is my desire to explore a character or institution that I wanted to see more of. In “The Colour-coded Threat Level of Magic” (currently unpublished), for example, I wanted to see more of the Diplomatic Corps of the Transdimensional Authority (most of the novels having focused on the criminal investigators of that organization). There’s a lot more there that I hope to explore if the inspiration strikes me.
The thing I love about this process is that every story expands my fictional Multiverse in new ways. Every story becomes a brick in an ever-growing fictional edifice. And of course, the more detailed and complex that universe grows, the more real it will become for the reader.
I’m thinking about this because the short work I’m currently working on, “The Lucretia Pelton Appreciation Society,” is a third generation iterative story. It started in my third novel, Random Dingoes, where I introduced Morphomorphs (yes, changelings that change), the stupidest robots in science fiction. According to the story, the robopocalypse is winding down, and the Morphomorphs were central to it coming to an end, but how that went down was left fairly vague. In the unpublished short story “How I Saved the World (And Lost My Job),” I explore a pivotal event which turns the tide of the robopocalypse. This story still left unexplained how the Morphomorphs came to be in the first place. That question is explored in “The Lucretia Pelton Appreciation Society.”
As of this moment, I’ve written enough short stories for four collections (three themed, one general), or two fat The Complete Short Stories of… volumes. Whether or not all of my short stories find homes in magazines or anthologies, they will eventually find homes in some collection. And boy, will they ever fill out my Multiverse when they do!