Tag Archives: short story

April 24, 2012 · 12:41 pm

“1000 Words” Anthology Available on Kindle and Developing a Novella

I’m almost done with the “1000 Words” posts, really. 🙂 But I thought it’d be worth mentioning that the anthology is now available on Kindle : http://www.amazon.com/1000-Words-Collection-Stories-ebook/dp/B007WMXV6O/ref=sr_1_24?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1335312063&sr=1-24

The paperback version will be available starting this Friday the 27th, assuming that all goes well. It should be available on Amazon and Createspace. At this point in time I’m not doing expanded distribution, since I don’t think it will have the drive needed to pay itself off. The book will be under $10.00, and will include all ten short stories, have special print formatting, and be in full color (hence the price) that includes each of the ten book covers. 🙂

On a side note, I’ve found that I enjoyed putting all this together. So while short stories themselves may not be my thing (I can now focus on my YA novel, yay!), I’m considering writing a collection of short stories that develop into a novella. Reason being, a few reviews I’ve gotten on Smashwords suggested interest in seeing The Hunter or Socks developed into a longer story. While I don’t see The Hunt becoming much longer (unless I get a few short story ideas I decide to develop), I am considering writing Socks into a two or three part novella. That is– write three sections that are approximately 10,000 words (but not strictly linked to that– I learned from this project that’d be a bad idea). Each one would be a complete story, but the whole project would be linked. Each of the three parts would probably cost a dollar or so.

For a quick reminder, Socks is the YA sci-fi romance short story I wrote for “1000 Words.” It has hints of dystopia, and can be found free on Smashwords if you’re curious to see which one I’m talking about: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/154150

So if you guys are interested in seeingSocksdeveloped into a novella, please bring up your thoughts and comment. That way I know if it’s worth dividing my time between it and the YA novel I’m working on. 🙂

Self-Publishing 1000 Words – The Magician

Whew. These past few days have been hectic. It’s time for me to order the print version of 1000 Words, and thankfully, I’m in the final stages of preparation. I’ve got all the stories done. All the covers are done. I’ve just uploaded The Magician to Smashwords. Now I’ve just got to review the print book file on Createspace and make adjustments as needed.

Anyways, here’s the cover for my latest “1000 Words” short story,The Magician. Originally it also had a border meant to look like stage curtains, with little black and white checkered buttons on the side. I was told it was too cluttered, and looked like he was in a coffin. So… I cut back on some of the florishes, adjust the text for readability, and voila! We have a cover!

Short Story on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/153295

Look forward to Socks (a sci-fi young adult romance) and Four-Way Stop (a literary horror story) on Smashwords soon. I plan to make more notes about cover design with this project in the coming posts, and I’ll also have further announcements regarding the upcoming print and eBook editions of “1000 Words,” the complete anthology.

By the way, if any of you have been reviewing the short stories already up on Smashwords, thank you. It’s neat to see the reviews trickling in. Really neat if they’re good, but still nice to know what’s not so good.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any questions. 🙂

Self-Publishing “1000 Words” – The Dreamkeeper

Cover reveal for The Dreamkeeper, part of my “1000 Words project.” I’m quite pleased with this cover, though the typography decided it wanted to give me a difficult time finding something that worked for the story and also looked good in thumbnail size. I finally decided that the “1000 Words” part would just have to be smaller in thumbnail, and likely unreadable at that size, while the author name and title would be clear. If it catches someone’s attention, hopefully they’ll click it and see the larger cover.

That’s the idea, anyway.

So for the quick update, The Dreamkeeper is now available on Smashwords. It’s also sitting at 900 words, rather than 1000. Why? Because I kept cutting words, rather than adding them. AfterThe Hunt, in which I probably should have cut another hundred words from the story, it’s become rather evident that I follow the theory of making a story as long or as short as it needs to be. That means that if it needs to be longer, fine. (But you might be suprised at what can be cut, as I’m discovering with my YA novel). However, if it should be shorter, that’s fine, too.

Of course, since this is specifically for a 1000 words project, I’m going to try to keep it within 100 words either way.

As for the statistics of the project so far, Snow Witch hasn’t had any more downloads, though The Carrier is still getting the occasional download, and now sits at 76 downloads total. How many people actually read it, I don’t know. Shafted Dreams is being… well… shafted, at a low 13 downloads since I uploaded it three days ago, while The Hunt has surpassed it with a total of 24 downloads and 1 review. Not bad for uploading it yesterday. Everything’s free, of course, so that may help me get downloads, where having them cost $0.99 didn’t have much result.

As of uploading The Dreamkeeper a few minutes ago, it has had three downloads. I shall hope that continues. 🙂

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/151854

Meanwhile, I am working on another cover for an unwritten “1000 Words” story, tentatively called,The Magician, and I have three story ideas to play with. One shall be young adult dystopian/war. 🙂