The Soon-Be-Christmas Tuesday Twitter Tale : Deck The Halls

‘Fool!’ The sorcerer kicked his imp familiar. ‘Now we’re for it. When I said get a fairy for the top of the tree I meant a toy one!’





The Tuesday Twitter Tale is a weekly work of tweet-length fiction. It is posted here and on Twitter (along with the #vss - very short story - hash tag).

Should We Write For Games?

The recent discussion on eReaders and the problems of books having to compete with games (and other distractions) on iPads and the like set me thinking. Perhaps it's wrong to try and compete; perhaps we should see games as another outlet for our writing?

 
I think it's perfectly possible to love both. When I was younger I found games such as Lords of Midnight and Tir Na Nog - ancient history now - almost as engrossing and magical places as Earthsea and Narnia.

Games and books are different things, of course, and they entertain in different ways, but there's a crossover there. Good games require good writing - by which I mean they need believable characters and narrative tension and all the stuff we as writers are used to grappling with. There are also hybrid forms where literature and gaming connect : interactive fiction where the reader gets to make choices and text adventure games where the writing creates the world in the reader/player's mind.

Perhaps rather than fretting about the lure of games, we should write for them instead? It's an avenue that intrigues me, I have to say. So, coming soon, is a guest post by my good friend Andy Yates, gaming guru and all-round good guy, who has played more computer games than I've had hot dinners. Andy blogs about PC games here and he also writes too : both conventional and interactive fiction. I'm sure he'll have a lot of fascinating stuff to tell us. Stay tuned!

Flash Fiction : Light Years (64/100)

... frame ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Ereaders Are Becoming Cool

In the discussion following the recent interview with Ether Books, blogging chum Thomas Taylor expressed a certain anxiety about young readers and iPhone-based fiction :

... it would only work if the target audience is massively into reading on mobile apps already, and those of us writing for children might not fare so well. After all, what is a 12-year-old going to do with his iPhone on the school bus? Read? Or text his mates and play games?

Hope you don't mind me quoting you there Thomas. It's an excellent point.

My initial reaction was that younger readers may well be more amenable to reading on ereaders than the general population. Interestingly, some recent research suggests there might be something to this. You can read it here. It's an analysis of the present wishlists of American children in the 6-12 and 13+ age-ranges.

The figure that caught my eye was that 15% of US children aged 13+ are hoping for an ereader : the same number as want a Wii and slightly more than want an iPhone. Other gaming devices like Xboxes are way down. OK, so we don't know if that's because they already own iPhones etc. but still I think that's enouraging. 11% of children aged 6-12 want an ereader too.

We oldies may stress and fret about the demise of our traditional books. This generation and the next generation will have no such qualms I think. They'll just pick up their ereaders and get on with it.

The Soon-Be-Christmas Tuesday Twitter Tale : Bearing Gifts

‘My lady, we bring gold, frankincense and precious myrhh from the east.’ ‘Lovely. None of you thought to bring nappies* too I suppose?’


* or diapers, if you prefer.


The Tuesday Twitter Tale is a weekly work of tweet-length fiction. It is posted here and on Twitter (along with the #vss - very short story - hash tag).

My Extensive Research Into What People Want To Read ...

OK, actually this took me about a second to discover. And it's not really what people want to read so much as what stuff people generally like. But, hey. It's a tag cloud from Amazon.com (current one here). In other words, it's a visual representation of the most popular tags people have applied to stuff (not just books) they've bought/discovered/downloaded on Amazon. And presumably, I'm thinking, people will only bother to tag stuff they like.

I think it's pretty interesting. Fantasy and science fiction are big I see. As is adventure and music. So my recent Kindle release Guitar Heroes should do OK then - got most of those bases covered! Clearly what I need to write, though, is a fantasy romance with some comedy and adventure thrown in. And some vampires, possibly playing on an xbox. That looks like being a sure-fire winner!

Flash Fiction : Light Years (63/100)

... One ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

An Interview With Maureen Scott of Ether Books

As promised, here is my interview with Maureen Scott, co-founder of eReader short story publisher Ether Books. It's a fairly long post, but contains some fascinating insights. If your intrigued by the possibilities of eReaders - or worried or confused - what she has to say will be of great interest.

Q. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and the idea behind Ether?

A. I've spent the past 10 years of my career in the mobile industry. I am an early adopter of new technology and my background is in IT and new product development. My business partner Mike Jones and I have strong track records of providing new products when industries "go digital," which is happening now in the publishing industry due to the creation of eReader hardware devices, software and platforms.

We are in the very early stages of mobile apps adoption and development. Ten years ago I was at Psion's mobile internet start-up Trivanti, where I was recruiting mobile content for the world's first smartphone, the Ericsson R380. The history lesson in mobile content is important; we could not have the Apple app store and smartphones today without the blood sweat and tears that have taken place in the mobile industry over the past decade.



Q. The commute-length short story would seem to be well-suited to eReader devices like the iPhone. Almost the literary equivalent of the casual game. Does it surprise you there aren't more available?

A. We are not surprised that there are not more apps like ours; Mike and I have a track record of recognising new technology trends early and building products to leverage the new market dynamics.

There have been a lot of apps released that have "classic" short story content. We believe we are the only company licensing short form content from living writers to place in our app. We operate a distribution platform using Apple's in-app purchase functionality. The functionality was designed by Apple to enable games apps to charge for "levels" of their games. Our innovation is using the functionality to sell discreet stories, essays, poetry, etc at a micro-payment cost level. We believe we are very early to this market; the publishing industry is focused on hardware eReaders like the Kindle and the iPad. We have our own eReader software which we have launched initially via our iPhone app. We have spoken to other companies who have had the same idea but have not delivered any apps. We have a huge advantage due to our previous experience when compared to these more traditional companies.



Q. Do you see yourselves as a software house, writing apps to deliver fiction to readers, or as a publisher, exercising editorial control etc., but one that just happens to use electronic devices? Are you more a bookshop or a book publisher?

A. We view ourselves as a hybrid. We certainly provide a channel to market and monetisation for writers via our app. We curate content now, and are not providing editoral except for the occasional correcting of typos, etc. Our starting point is writers. We want to be the digital destination for writers to showcase their content, and for consumers to source a great digital read. We are like Amazon in that we are a distribution platform. We are unlike Amazon because we curate content and are not a "self-publishing" platform.

We are positioning ourselves as a digital content technical platform and destination for consumers. We will be providing our community of Ether writers with tools to help them promote their content via our app. It is a new market and we want to constantly innovate and help our writers earn a living by writing great content. We have social networking functionality built into our app to enable consumers to engage directly with our writers as well as "tell a friend" functionality to spread the word about our app but more importantly our great new writers.




Q. What genres do you plan to publish? Most novels are "mainstream", of course, but there are strong traditions of short-story telling in SF, fantasy etc. Do you see those markets working differently?

A. We can offer any number of genres and are increasing the genres all the time. We always ask our writers to think of new and fun names for genres. We are actively seeking SciFi and Fantasy writers. We can't predict if the markets will work differently; we have architected our infrastructure so we can launch "genre" apps when the demand is there.



Q. Do you plan to ever publish other forms - novels for instance?

A. We are soon launching serialisations of a novels, in the Charles Dickens model. We are innovators and have the technology platform and mindset to deliver content in "byte sized" reads. We know that serialisations have worked previously for mobile content. Mobisodes have been popular mobile content for short video-type content. We think the same thing will be popular with the digital word.



Q. Devices such as the Kindle and iPad have come a long way but they still seem rather crude at times : drab, clunky, expensive and they break if you drop them. Do you think they'll ever supplant the paperback?


A. My experience of industries moving into the digital arena has taught me that technology does not replace, it adds channels to market and changes commercial models. The airline industry thought they could save the commissions they paid to travel agents by creating technology to facilitate consumers booking their own flights. What the airline industry did not see coming was the new "direct booking" technology enabling new airlines to enter the market with a much lower cost base. Travel agents did not disappear. The direct booking technology enabled pricing transparency and gave consumers real time price information that was not previously available. We at Ether love the Internet and the power it places in the hands of consumers! Will eReader hardware devices replace the paperback? For some people, yes, for other consumers, no. But it does create the environment to enable writers to get published without ever working with a literary agent or a traditional book publisher.

My gut instincts tell me that people are reading more than they ever have, but they don't "think" of surfing the web and reading text messages as "reading." This is where context and technology come into play. When technology is developed to enable people to read in a different "format" ie, via a digital reader or on their phone the technology acts to "enable" consumption in a different context. I have downloaded books onto my Kindle and then bought the paperback since I wanted a hard copy. The analogy that I use is a simple one. Every day I receive documents in my email inbox. I certainly don't print them all! I read most straight from my screen. But sometimes I do want a hardcopy, so I print it. I believe that this is how digital publishing will evolve over time. On demand printing will faciliate this; and the publishing industry will be forced to be a lot more efficient.

If I were a traditional publisher right now I would be publishing as many extracts of books that are "in the pipeline" as possible. If these books aren't adopted, or downloaded by digital readers I would kill the publication of the physical book. Publishers should be welcoming the new technology with open arms! They can now test the market before committing huge sums to the "hope" that a book will be a best-seller. They will have factual data on which to make their "physical" book publishing decisions. So maybe the question to ask is "will publishers only print paperbacks of books that are proven to be read in the digital space?" I have never been good at predicting the future but it does pose some interesting questions. I would also add that the Kindle and iPad are first releases. We non-engineers cannot even hope to imagine the future technical capabilities of the hardware devices. Combine that with the innovation of software developers and the future looks very exciting indeed. Maybe the commercial change will be that fewer pens and pencils are sold :). And sales of eye glasses will increase as we all require glasses at an earlier age from spending so much time reading from a screen. Who knows?




Q. What's your advice to writers who are wary about embracing new technology? Should they be afraid or enthusiastic?


A. Enthusiatic. The world is your oyster! The biggest challenge will be finding your audience; but when you do you will get to keep more of your well-earned money! You can forget about those horrible rejection letters and the months and months of waiting. I haven't even mentioned how fast writers can be published via digital platforms.



Q. New technology invariably has implications for the sort of art that is produced. The mechanized printing press, for example, allowed the mass-market novel to exist. How do you think literature on eReaders will evolve?


A. We are already testing this at Ether. We are running our "Ether Best Mobile Writer" competition from mid-December 2010. The initital competition is open to writers in the 18-24 year old age group, and will focus on fiction of less than 2500 words. The context of mobile content consumption is that readers have time to kill and are bored. Our mobile writers need to quickly grab the attention of the reader and hold it, since the reader can so easily play a game on their smartphone instead! Some of our writers have already stopped working on their novels and are instead writing more short stories. Consumer behaviour is notoriously difficult to predict and we are really excited to identify the type of stories that are likely to win the eyeballs of our readers.




Q. Finally, can readers of this blog submit short stories to you? If so, what sort of thing are you after and how do they go about it?


A. Absolutely. We are going to be launching an on-line submission process soon, details will be announced via the Ether web site.



So there we are : fascinating stuff, I think you'll agree. Many thanks to Maureen for taking the time to answer these questions.

So will we see a resurgence in short story reading because of eReaders? Or will things stay pretty much as they are? How will traditional publishers adapt to the possibilities of the new technology? How will agents? No-one really knows, of course, but personally I do concur with Maureen's view that writers at least should regard new technology with enthusiasm rather than dread. Because, whatever happens, however people do read fiction in the future, we're always going to need writers to create the fiction in the first place aren't we?

Meanwhile, Ether Books are here and their iPhone app is here.

Introducing Write1Sub1: A Story A Week in 2011 ...

Funny how things work out, how one thing can lead to another ...

This post over at Milo James Fowler's in medias res blog started out about something else completely. Then, half way down the comments, the idea of emulating Ray Bradbury and writing/submitting a story a week cropped up. It suddenly seemed obvious that it had to be : a NaNoWriMo-style scheme, but lasting for a whole year. The challenge being to write a story and submit a story (perhaps the same story) each week for a year. 52 stories : short fiction, flash fiction or Twitter fiction.

Is it crazy? Is it genius? Is it even possible? Who knows? Only one way to find out. And so Write1Sub1 has been created. The official start date is 1/1/11 so this is just an early warning. If you're deep into NaNoWriMo it's probably the last thing you want to hear about. But if you want to find out more, or even sign up, there's the beginnings of a blog at write1sub1.blogspot.com explaining it all. It should be a lot of fun ...

Oh, and hopefully soon we'll have a proper logo you can add to your blog etc. Our first effort is above - if anyone is able to create a better one we'd love to use it!

The Soon-Be-Christmas Tuesday Twitter Tale : Christmas Is Coming

Christmas in six weeks, kids demanding iPhones and bikes and now the factory closing down. She sat smoking, thinking the unthinkable.






The Tuesday Twitter Tale is a weekly work of tweet-length fiction. It is posted here and on Twitter (along with the #vss - very short story - hash tag).

Coming Soon : An Interview with Ether Books

This Thursday I'm delighted to say I'll be posting an interview with Maureen Scott, co-founder of Ether Books. As I mentioned the other day, Ether have recently accepted a couple of short stories of mine and that prompted me to find out more about them. Their mission is to publish short stories (essays, poetry etc.) to users of eReader devices such as the iPhone. Stories are delivered via their own Ether app.

I've been banging on about how well short fiction and eReaders go together for a while now and it's great to find someone who agrees. But don't take my word for it. Here's an interview with Paul McCartney (fellow Ether author, fellow vegetarian, fellow, um, actually that's about where the similarity ends), talking about the same stuff. Well worth a listen.

Anyway, Maureen kindly agreed to be interviewed. She makes a whole load of interesting points about new technology, the publishing industry and the changes we all face. It's fascinating stuff. Do drop by on Thursday to see what she has to say.


Thanks also to Jonathan Pinnock for pointing me in the direction of Ether in the first place.

 

Flash Fiction : Light Years (62/100)

... years. ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Honest Scrap Award!

Thanks to the Milo over at the marvellous in media res for the Honest Scrap Award, the receiving of which means I have to share ten random things about myself.

Sounds like fun on a Friday, so here goes. I should warn you, though, that I've made one of these up. Can you tell which?

1. I've been a vegetarian since 1985.
2. My earliest memory is of the giant skeleton of an Irish Elk looming over me.
3. I wear a white gold wedding ring.
4. News reporters' persistent refusal to use the word "epicentre" correctly drives me mad. Mad! Don't you have a dictionary?!
5. I like thrash metal.
6. My two daughters each share a name with a character from The Lord of the Rings.
7. Despite being British I follow the New York Giants football team. Go G-Men!
8. I'm allergic to antihistamines. Which is awkward.
9. "I believe in live and let live. I believe you get what you give."
10. ... but I'm also a bit of a grammar fascist. Misused apostrophe's upset me greatly.

There we go! And I also get to hand the award on. I hereby nominate the following fine blogs to receive the award :

fairyhedgehog for general all-round fantasticity, including her recent quoting of my #1 writing tip.

Old Kitty for all the comments, support, encouragement and entertainment. I know she's had the award already but I'm giving it her again!

My friend Andy at PC Games and Reviews. Essential gaming relief and an occasional victim of my grammar fascism. Sorry Andy!

New Profile Photo!

So I've updated my profile photo' everywhere I could think of : blog, web site, Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, 6S, Twitfic etc. etc.

Just wanted to say a couple of things :

1. Apologies to everyone for exposing the full horror of my features to an unsuspecting world.
2. Thanks to my good friend, the artist Stephen Rippington, who took the picture. Stephen is a wonderfully talented painter, as you can see from his web site. Given what he had to work with, he's clearly no mug with a camera either.
3. Next time I should smile maybe ...

The Tuesday Twitter Tale : Working the Crowd

He spent that summer at the fun-fair, scaring the kids queueing for the ghost-train. Fortunately no-one spotted it wasn’t a costume.





The Tuesday Twitter Tale is a weekly work of tweet-length fiction. It is posted here and on Twitter (along with the #vss - very short story - hash tag).

Guitar Heroes Available on the Kindle, iPad, Web etc.

Guitar Heroes, a knockabout urban fantasy short story, is now available on the Kindle, as well as on the iPad, iPhone, Kobo, web etc. Many thanks to those of you who read and reviewed the story - I'm eternally and undyingly grateful! The reviews I've had have been very, very kind.

If you want to have a read, the 7000 word story is here on the US Kindle store, here on the UK Kindle store (shop as we would say!) and, via Smashwords, here for all the other devices. For a month you can download and read it for free on the Smashwords site by entering this promotional code : VX25U. You don't actually need an eReader device or anything : you can just read it online or download it as text.

Here's the blurb I'm using :

A knockabout, urban fantasy short story. Screaming Machinery are a moderately successful power-trio from Manchester, playing gigs to rapturous local crowds. But none of their fans realise they are also mighty heroes, regularly saving the world with magic and sword.

They are called upon again when Manchester comes under dire threat. Eighteen murders take place, each a node in a vast rune drawn across the city in blood. Something very large and powerful is coming through and it’s up to Screaming Machinery to try and stop them ...

We'll see how it does. As I mentioned the other day, I'm still experimenting with this epublishing malarkey. Will fantasy do better or worse than SF? Will the shorter form be the ereader success I've predicted? We shall see!

Flash Fiction : Light Years (61/100)

... hundred ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Four Acceptances In One Day? WTF!

Had a good day yesterday : four works of one sort or another accepted. Definitely a record for me.

Trapeze Magazine accepted a Twitter piece titled Green Magick. That'll see the light of day early next year.

Ether - great name - accepted two realist/literary works : She'd Always Loved To Travel and Seek Alternative Route. This is a fascinating market and definitely one to watch. They distribute short fiction via an iPhone app : like myself, they're convinced short stories and eReaders make perfect bedfellows. And they've recently been shortlisted for a Mobile Entertainment Award in the Best Mobile Book Company category.

Finally, the luscious Bolts of Silk accepted a poem called Standing Stones, which will appear in the next couple of months. This is my third success with them after Coalmining and ' were published there last year.

So, all in all, a pretty good old day.

By the way, on the subject of poetry, which I only write occasionally, you know I rather suspect my poetic muse moonlights. She spends most of her time inspiring others. Only when she has a few scraps left over no-one else wants does she drop by and toss them my way. I really would like to write more ...

Six Word Stories

So, I didn't get anywhere in Arvon's six word story competition, which I entered a while back just to see what you could do in such a tiny word count. Hey ho.

My six entries ranged from the serious to the facetious, including one that I hoped would at least be the longest story they'd get. For your brief entertainment (or otherwise), here are the six I submitted :


         'Mrs. Chadwick? It's about your son.'


         ‘Died 2009. Reanimated 2010. Seeking brains.’


         Susan swam westwards, never looking back.


         'Just go.' 'What?' 'Please.' 'Really?' 'Go!'


         ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Antidisestablishmentarianism Association : New Members Needed!’


         ‘For Sale. Hemingway novel. Too macho.’


Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a place in Wales by the way. Somehow, I just knew they weren't going to go for the zombie one ...

The Bonfire Night Tuesday Twitter Tale : Faces in the Flames

Shapes, faces, figures danced in the shifting flames. Bonnie couldn’t tear her gaze away, even as they began to beckon her forward.



Cultural note : November 5th is bonfire night - firework night - here in the UK. Possibly not where you are.



The Tuesday Twitter Tale is a weekly work of tweet-length fiction. It is posted here and on Twitter (along with the #vss - very short story - hash tag).