Short Stories (and other random stuff) for the Bored and Easily Amused: 08/04/13

Introduction

If you like to read, and enjoy quirky, welcome. There are about 30 random things here for you. After you read a short story you may even find some personal comments/insights! The main purpose of creating this blog is for writers. I see so much written about writer's block, and honestly, I don't have it. Occasionally, I write short stories, longer stories, books, plays, one act plays, monologues, and sometimes I even think one is good enough to submit somewhere. Of course, when you submit a story to a magazine that receives 200 stories a month and publishes five, you'd better enjoy the process of writing. I'm not suggesting that I'm a good writer, merely that I can sit down and just start writing.

It is important to write, to constantly be working on your art. If you are constantly plagued by writer's block, perhaps you are being too selective in what you write about. With that in mind, I wanted to share with you some examples of my writing, from someone who can write all the time. Occasionally the topics are a bit strange, but I don't let that slow me down, I love to write and get to a finished product. Hopefully, by looking at some examples, you will say to yourself that phrase that all artists who visit MOMA in NYC say: "Well, I can do this!" That would be good, because you can! One of my posts is about a talking tomato. (You have to be able to do better than that!)

In part I'm trying to get some of my stuff in one place, so keep in mind I never claimed it was going to be an incredible read. You can decide that. I will tell you that occasionally I have a story in me that seems to fit the goal of a publication, and I try to write specifically with that goal in mind. Lately I've been considering publications that publish nonfiction memoirs, so some of the entries you'll find here will have that flavor. Perhaps this is a way to get past writer's block - find a publication looking for something that you'd like to write. It seems like memoir-based publications may be a good place to start, because we're all experts in our own families. I'm using a blog here to share some of the things I've written; the blog format is not ideal, so you need to poke around a little at old posts, to see if you can find a story or something else that may interest you.

Two last items. None of these are finished products. I usually get to a point where I have something written, and then stop. If it is something I may decide to submit for some reason, I'll finish formatting, following the specific rules of the magazine or organization (the rules are alwaysdifferent). If you do see something in here that you may be interested in using, don't hesitate to contact me.

So welcome to my blog. Welcome to my writing. Write, people, write! It feels good.

Please also consider getting a copy of my first book, Saturday Night at Sarah Joy's. All Royalties go to the Hurricane Sandy New Jersey Relief Fund. Please check out the book's blog at: saturdaynightatsarahjoys.blogspot.com.

Thank you!

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Keep Writing and Good Things Happen!

PageTurners is an international publishing house in Bangalore, India. They recently published an anthology of short stories, The Traversal of Lines, which was sold to raise money for The Gosports Foundation. Dedicated to a cross-cultural perspective, PageTurners is publishing a second anthology of short stories called Across the Ages, again an international, culturally focussed collection of creative writing (https://www.facebook.com/pageturnersanthology). Across the Ages will contain stories on 'age'. PageTurners recently announced that they selected my short story "Old/Bored/Trouble/Dead" for inclusion in this latest anthology. You can find the short story at http://www.readwave.com/old-bored-trouble-dead-across-the-ages_s3093.

In June 2013, the short story website Readwave (www.readwave.com) formed a partnership with Worldreader (worldreader.org), an organization that works to promote literacy in developing countries in Africa. They load tablets and Kindles and Nooks with e-books and short stories, and send them to schools in need. Worldreader is backed by major publishing houses as well as Amazon. I'm honored that three of my short stories were selected for inclusion in the e-readers. "Damaged", "Garage of the Nobodies" and "Old/Bored/Trouble/Dead" can all be read at readwave.com. The Worldreader project is doing amazing things. Please check them out and consider supporting their work.

As part of the Author Interview series on Infinity Publishing's blog, an interview with John Allison concerning his first book, Saturday Night at Sarah Joy's, can be found here.

My (longer) short story, “Red Light Plywood”, appeared on the Friday, August 2, 2013 edition of Alain Gomez’s Short Story Symposium blog, http://bit.ly/1bXnT3R.