The first collection of short stories and micro fiction is now available, currently from Smashwords for Sony, PDF and others HERE , and from Amazon for Kindle very soon.
Please see the description page for more details: Bleak Midwinter Tales
Author / geraldhornsby
Progress on my collections
After the brief lull last night to play with graphics, I decided to knuckle down and get my editing done.
And hurrah! It’s done! I have 25 stories for each of the collections, and around 15,000 words in each book.
Now, I have to do the boring bit of checking, formatting, rechecking, reformatting, re-rechecking, … etc etc. But, with a bit of luck and a following wind, the finished first collection should be uploaded sometime tomorrow.
Editing? I hate editing!
Yes, I really do. I mean, I’ve done the difficult bit. I’ve written the story, haven’t I? I’ve crafted the work, created the narrative. Isn’t that enough?
The fact is, I’ve seen enough so-so stories, and just plain rubbish writing, that I know I have to do the absolute best I can with everything I do. It’s what I would expect, especially if I was paying for something.
But God, I hate editing!
That’s why I played with covers tonight, instead of editing, and created what I think is a rather nice cover for my collection of shorts.
I hope it’s successful.
Cover for Bleak Midwinter Tales
Sample Sunday
I’ve started doing this ‘thing’ with fellow writers over at the Kindleboards forum. The idea is that you post a sample of your work each Sunday, and then Tweet it using the hashtag #SampleSunday. Then fellow writers will retweet if they like it, and thus publicity is created.
Hopefully.
Read it at: #SampleSunday
Should I write literary fiction, or should I write genre?
I’ve just read a fascinating article by Laura Miller HERE , where she investigates the continuing “literary – vs – genre” debate. This, in response to an article in the Guardian recently.
For me, this article sums up the ideas about reading, and why we shouldn’t dismiss genre fiction too lightly. It all depends on who your target audience is. Do you want your works to be admired for their cleverness, or do you want them to be read by a mass market?
The current rise in popularity of the romance genre in ebooks shows that there is a market for ‘traditional’ genre fiction. And long may it continue.
Oh, and I can’t write literary fiction. I’ve tried. God knows, I’ve tried. But it’s genre for me.
Gathering together
I’ve nearly finished the sort-through of all my short works, going back over several years. Following some great online advice, I’m almost certainly going to collect the shorts into ‘collections’, and give these away free. I’m also going to be giving away samples of my writing here, and various other online locations. Finally, I’m going to be writing some new short stories, featuring the characters in my serial novels, which (hopefully) will introduce them to a new audience.
We shall see!
Old writing
I’ve started gathering together stuff I’ve already written. Some of it looks surprisingly good, although there is the occasional glaring error which didn’t get fixed at the time.
And I’ve come across some real stinkers. There’s a couple of things I wrote for a local regional newspaper competition. I thought they were pretty good at the time. Sure, there’s words that sort of make sense. They’re strung together in what look like sentences. The grammar and punctuation are spot on. But oh boy, do these stories stink.
So, conclusion? My writing is better than it used to be. And, hopefully, it’s more commercial, or at least, people will want to read it.
Publishing shorts
I’m an impatient kind of guy. If there’s something I want to do, then I want to do it now.
Like publishing my work. Do I want to do the “research – submit – wait – wait some more – almost give up – read rejection … research” roundabout? Or would I rather get my words out there and doing something, rather than sitting on my hard disk?
To this end, I’m going to start publishing my short works, probably for free download on Smashwords (Sony et al) and Amazon (Kindle). They will be the teasers for the main works which will come along after I’ve edited them. And rewritten them. And edited some more.