Oneoveralpha's Writings: October 2014

Friday, October 31, 2014

Download Political Pies for free!

What’s scarier than all the ghosts and goblins at your door? There’s an election next week.

To try to blunt the horror of the season, I’m offering my anthology of forty, short, political stories Political Pies for free! You’ll be able to download it to your Kindle from Saturday November 1, through Wednesday November 5. Download it early, and you can read it while waiting in line to vote on Tuesday.

If “free” isn’t enough to entice you, check out the cover and blurb:

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

So what are you waiting for? Download your copy now, you won’t get another chance until next year.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Jumping into Patreon

So several months ago I heard of this Patreon site where creators of videos, comics, stories, or whatever can raise funds with the help of patrons. I thought it was a great idea, but I wasn’t too sure how well it would work for someone like me. But after thinking about, I decided to join.

My first project I’ll be working on is to write twelve, short science fiction stories of a few thousand words at least. These stories will be set in twelve “locations” in the solar system, the sun (well, near the sun), Mercury, Venus, Earth/moon, Mars, Asteroid Belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud. My plan is to write a story a month, and at the end of the year I’ll polish up the stories and publish them as a Kindle ebook. Anyone who finds this interesting, and especially those who’d like to help out financially, should check out my Patreon Profile.

My original plan was to write the first story or two, and then start posting them in January. But recently I’ve been trying to force myself to write more, so I decided to start a few months early. The first story, set near the sun with the working title “Cleansing Fire,” should (I’ll say 95% likelihood) be up sometime in November. Right now I’d say it’s about a third done, but I hope by giving myself a deadline I’ll get around to finishing it. We’ll just have to see.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Check out QuarterReads

QuarterReads describes itself as “A short read at a fair price.” Basically, you read short stories or poems for a quarter. What’s really interesting is what happens for writers. Of that $0.25 you spend on a story, the author of said story receives $0.22. Having things the other way around where the author only gets $0.03 is more common. But that’s not all. If you enjoy the story, you can tip the author an additional, $0.25, $0.50, or $0.75, and all of the tips go to the author.

As someone who usually writes short stories, you can understand why I’m excited by something like QuarterReads. But for the site to really take off, requires readers. So I encourage you to check it out and hopefully find some stories you like. If you’re curious about my stories, here is my author profile. Right now, I have two stories up, but I’m hoping to add at least one a month.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Recap of my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenge