Fourth of July Voter Registration Drive Book Sale!

I know a lot of people are tired of being told that every election for the past decade WILL DETERMINE THE VERY SURVIVAL OF THE NATION!  But it’s true.  It seems every election now is a choice between democracy and the literal forces of evil.  And the fastest way for the forces of evil to fully seize power is if We The People can’t be bothered to vote.  To keep our democracy, we need to vote, in this election and every election.

But in order to vote, you need to be registered.  If you’re an American citizen who will be eighteen by Election Day, November 5th of this year, and you are not registered, I ask you to register.  Your state’s website should have all the necessary details.  

To try to sweeten the pot for people doing their patriotic duty, the week of the Fourth, three of my ebooks will be free to download.  All I ask is that if you download them, you register.  There’s no way for me to check if the people grabbing my books for free registered, so we’ll just go on the honor system.  Read them now, or hold on to them to have something to read while you wait in line to vote come November. 

But what if you’re already registered?  In that case I ask you to check your registration.  The list of voters needs constant updating as people register, move, and die.  And even without nefarious voter purges, it’s possible for mistakes to happen.  But if you catch the mistake now, you have plenty of time to get it fixed so that come Election Day, things will be smoother.  Your state’s website should also have the details on how to check your registration.

But what if you’re not American?  Well then, all I ask is that you participate however you can in your government.  The literal forces of evil aren’t just working here in the states.

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The following three ebooks will be free to download from Monday, July 1st, through Friday, July 5th.  The title links take you to the US site for the book.

Political Pies

Everybody complains about politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into my Political Pies anthology. The stories are either politically neutral or equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.

A Man of Few Words

A Man of Few Words is a collection of fifty of my flash fiction stories. What would really happen if a “T-Rex on steroids” attacked a city? Why do science fiction writers make the best lovers? How does a company get to Second Base with VIPs? I explore these questions and more using less than 1,000 words and in various genres from humor to horror and general fiction to science fiction.

Duty

For reasons of safety and avoiding paradoxes, Time Travel Incorporated assigns a Guardian to all its travelers. So when there is an accident during political historian Roj Hasol’s trip back to 1968, it’s his Guardian Susan who sets out on the arduous task of cleaning up the mess.

Writing Newsletter Second Quarter 2024

 

In my last newsletter, I wrote that I had submitted a story for the first time in years, and I was waiting to hear back.  Well, I did hear back, and while they didn’t accept my story, they did say it was close and they hoped I’d consider them for another story.  Now I just have to write another story.

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This quarter I continued writing a story each month on my website, publishing, “When You Put it Like That,” “Let That Be a Lesson,” and “Die Trying.”  I also reposted, or posted, “Let it Rain,” “All the Money in the World,” and “A Whale of a Tale” on my Ko-fi profile.  I also reposted “I Just Write Stories” and “Ben’s Time Carriage” on two of my blogs.

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Two projects I’m slowly working on have me posting more microfictions and haikus.  In previous newsletters, I just had a link to each.  But that was somewhat tedious.  (If I counted correctly, I’ve published 18 microfictions and 16 haikus this quarter.)  I had made a page just for my microfiction, where I have the story with links to where it was published.  My haikus had been part of my poem page, but since I’ve been publishing so many of them, I decided to just make a new page for them. 

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I don’t really have any other writing news.  I’ve been busy getting our garden ready, and now I’m trying to keep the weeds from taking over.  So I haven’t had much time to write.  Will I get more time next quarter?  We’ll just have to see.

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Image from Pixabay.

Random Writing Tips – Accept the numbers game

 

For the first six or seven years I was on Twitter, I was rather hit or miss on trying to get followers.  I posted whenever, and followed people I though seemed interesting and just hoped they might follow me back.  But then I decided to be more active.  I started to regularly post stuff, and I started to build up my followers.  What I would do, is I would check out who was following someone interesting or somebody I was following.  I would then start following people with interesting bios.  But since there was a limit on how many people you could follow, I started keeping track of who I followed and if they followed me back.  I think every Friday I’d note the last person I followed, and if they didn’t follow me back within a week or so, I’d unfollow them.  Unless they were really interesting.

It took me a couple of years, but I eventually had just over 7000 followers on my writing account.  (I think I had just over 5000 followers on my personal account.)  How many of them were actually people, who were interested in what I posted (often links to my books), and who actually saw my tweets, I’ll never know.  But things were looking up.  Then came Musk.  For various reasons, I stopped posting on Twitter, stating that if an adult took over I’d be back.  But I think too much damage has been done and all my work to build up a following there is gone.

At some point, I had started a profile on Mastodon.  At first, it was just to be another site to reach a different audience, but when I left Twitter, it became my main social media and marketing platform.  I do regularly post stuff, although I’ve drastically cut down on posting links to my books.  Screaming into the Twitter void “Buy my book!” was perfectly normal, but constantly marketing – especially on my instance – isn’t the Mastodon thing, so I’ve been reduced to posting stuff that people will find interesting and maybe check out my books.  I haven’t tried too hard for followers, but I did recently break 300.

Marketing on Twitter was always weird.  I’d tweet about Book A, and then someone would buy Book B, but I never knew how they ended up on Book B.  I had started keeping track of what books I tweeted about and which books were bought, but the results were inconclusive.  But one thing that seems pretty clear is my books sales have dropped dramatically since I left Twitter.  Apparently, having thousands of followers did help. 

All of that was to get to my tip: accept that to really have any success selling books, you need to play the numbers game.  You could be your generation’s greatest writer, but if nobody knows about you, you won’t sell anything.  So between writing and revising and living your life and probably a day job, you also need to find a social media site – or better yet two or three – and put in the time to build up a following.  To that end, check out Mastodon, and maybe give me a follow.

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Image from Pixabay.

Ideas that don’t work

Recently, I had the idea for a scene where a 1950’s scifi writer was telling his agent about his latest novel.  It was set in that far off year of 2024, and told of the beginning of a robot rebellion.  The idea behind it was, while all the technology was wrong, parts of this robot rebellion sounds a lot like what people fear will happen when the AIs take over. 

It was a nice little scene, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it.  I eventually had the idea of this writing getting sucked to now, and he is amazed with how far we’ve come in some areas, smartphones, but disappointed in how little we’ve done, like, where are the Mars colonies?  At first, this seemed like an interesting idea.  He ends up with a granddaughter who is trying to finish and update some of the stories left behind when he mysteriously disappeared, and she has to beat the casual misogyny and racism out of him. 

I can’t remember if I had the first idea while I was driving to work, or while doing my mind-numbing day job, but I wrote the basics down in my writing notebook during my lunch break.  But I kept thinking about it when I went back to work, and that’s when things started to unravel.  Basically, everything was to have this grounded reality, but then there was this random time portal that … threw everything off.  I don’t know how long I thought about it, or how many little changes I made to try to get the story to work.  And when I finally had something that might work, I realized that it little to do with the original idea of a robot/AI rebellion, which had been the whole point. 

I have a whole folder of Dead Stories.  Some are just ideas I quickly figured out weren’t going to work, but others I didn’t figure out weren’t going to work until they were half-finished.  And I know that all the time spent writing – even work on Dead Stories – is still writing exercises that help future writing projects, but sometimes I wish I could put out a collection of my half-finished Dead Stories and people would be curious enough to buy it.  I mean, it is late stage capitalism, I need to monetize everything just to squeak by.  Say, have you checked out my most recent collection, The Uncapped Pen?

Short story – “I Just Write Stories”

“I Just Write Stories”

As a regular patron of the bookstore, Janet had often seen the fliers for the Pen Jockeys, the writing group that met every month in the store’s café.  She didn’t consider herself a writer, just a dabbler who wrote two or three short stories a year to post on her blog.  Several people – not just her friends – had said that she had talent and should write more.  After much debate, she decided to at least check out the writer group and see if she could learn anything from real writers.

In the café, two tables had been pushed together to make room for about a dozen people.  A sign in the middle of one proclaimed the tables reserved for the Pen Jockeys.  It was still about ten minutes until the meeting time, but two men and a woman already sat there.  They welcomed Janet and had her join them.

“I’m Brian,” the first man said.  “I write gay fantasy.”

The second man introduced himself as Doug.  He explained, “I write science fiction with strong libertarian underpinnings.”

“And I,” Samantha added, “write historical fiction with strong female characters.”

“It’s nice to meet you all,” Janet said.  “I … just write stories.”

The three looked confused.  “What kind of stories?” Doug asked.

Janet shrugged.  “Whatever comes to mind.”

“Do they have specific themes?” Brian asked.

“Um … no.  Just your basic run-of-the-mill stories.”

“What are you trying to achieve with them?” Samantha asked.

“Ah … they’re just fun.  I usually post them on my blog.” Janet looked around at them for a moment before asking, “Is that a problem?”

The three looked at one another.  “Well,” Doug began, “if you really want your writing to take off you need to write to a specific audience, be they gay, libertarian, feminist, what have you.”

“Oh,” Janet replied.  “Well, I’m just starting out, so I’m more interested in learning about writing, not the marketing aspects.”

“Writing is a business,” Brian stated.  “Too many people who want to be writers never learn that.”

Janet was quiet as she thought that over.

Samantha then asked, “You said you just write … for fun?”

“Yes.” Janet looked around.  “Don’t you?”

Beating a weird, coincidence horse

I believe it was a sometime in the summer of 2001, a few weeks after I moved into my first apartment, my phone rang.  I answered it, and a guy says, “Hey Steve, it’s Tom.”

I didn’t know any Toms, so I asked, “Who?”

He replied, “Tom,” slightly angrily.

I took a moment and thought.  I had gone to school with a Tom, but I hadn’t spoken to him in a decade or so, and there was no way he could have gotten this number.  “Who?”

“Karen’s brother,” he almost shouted. 

I almost shouted back, “Who the fuck is Karen,” but I stopped myself and said I think he had the wrong number.  I think in the following months there was a message or two on my machine for the other Steve, so apparently our numbers were very close.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I put up a post asking “What’s the weirdest conversation you’ve had?” and I gave a condensed version of that story.  A few days after I did that, I came across an old blog post I had done that resulted from that incident.  Apparently, I was trying to come up with a very short story, and I came up with an idea:

The story was set in one of those dystopian futures where people have numbers instead of names, for example, A517 or A to his friends.  Well, A sits down to a “genuine, vat-grown steak” when his comm buzzes.  He answers and someone goes, “Hey A, it’s T.” A doesn’t know any Ts, so T explains he works with R at the clone factory.

A still doesn’t know who T is, so T in frustration asks, “This is A571, right?”

“No, I’m A517.”

“Oh.  I’m sorry.  I guess I have the wrong number.”

Now, I know the first draft – let alone the rough outline – of everything sucks, but I highly doubt any amount of editing could turn that into something … halfway good. 

I wrote that in my notebook, and then forgot about it.  Some years later, I was flipping through my notebook and saw it, and wrote up the blog where I was thinking about an author putting out a collection of their terrible stories, and what would be a good title for it.  And I wondered if how we react to our bad stories could be some sort of personality test for writers. 

So, the chain of events: I got a wrong number call.  A few years later, I use that as the base for a failed short story.  A few years after that, I come across this failed short story, and use it for the base of a blog post.  Many years after that, I use the original wrong number story for a social media post.  A week or so later, I come across that old blog post, and use the whole story for this new blog post.  At this point, I’m wondering what I’m going to do with this in five, or ten more years?  Maybe I will put together a collection of my terrible stories, and I’ll basically just copy this for the introduction.

Writing Newsletter First Quarter 2024

 

Probably the biggest writing news for this first quarter of 2024, is that for the first time in years I’ve submitted a story to a magazine.  I’m still waiting to hear if they’ll accept it, but I hopefully will have good news on it for next quarter.

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I’ve continued writing a story for my website each month, publishing “Scheming,” “Outstanding Merit,” and “Always a Catch.” I’ve also posted “Deaf Ears,” “Always Have a Strong Finish,” and “Deadweight” on my Ko-fi account.  And I also posted “How Did They Get Our Number?” on one of my blogs.

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In these three months, I’ve posted microfiction stories on my Mastodon and Bluesky profiles on the following days: 1/12, 3/6, 3/11, 3/20, 3/23, and 3/25.  I’ve also posted haikus on 1/8, 2/19, 3/4, 3/18, and 3/26.  I’m slowly working on collections of both, so my plan is to post them more often to force myself to write the hundreds of each I need.  I guess we’ll see how well I do.

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In this quarter, I only managed one Free Story Idea, that of Star Jumping.  In my last Newsletter I wrote that I was thinking of only doing one a quarter, but I had been trying to do one every other month.  But, like other times, it seemed other things kept coming up.  And as with everything else, we’ll have to see what I’m able to do.

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Image from Pixabay.