The Word Cloud

The winning stories from the Frome Festival Short Story Competition which I and Jonathan Lee judged are now up on the website, and most of them can be downloaded and read.

The best of the stories were wonderful, and all of them are really well worth a read, not just because reading good writing is never, ever time wasted, but also because if you're thinking of entering competitions, it gives you an idea of the kind of standard that you're up against.

http://www.fromefestival.co.uk/?page_id=4252

Enjoy!

Emma

I finally managed a cyber sit-down with the incredibly busy and productive T.D. (Tim) Johnston. Aside from being an educator, and an author, Tim is the founder and editor of Short Story America which was recently named by Writer’s Digest as one of the Top 50 Online Literary Magazines in the world.

But, as you will see from the interview, Short Story America is far more than a literary magazine. For starters, their first Anthology will be released this month, and they are publishing it under their own imprint.

There is a lot of great information in this interview about Short Story America, which is a fantastic free resource for teachers, students, readers, and writers - with an amazing free library of classic short stories as well as great work from contemporary writers from around the world.

They pay writers for submissions, but the rights are non-exclusive, so writers are free to publish their stories elsewhere afterwards, or themselves. They also publish select stories in their hardback anthology, and as audiobooks. All the details, and much more, are in the interview.

Can you tell us a little about Short Story America and about what gave you the idea?

I have taught short fiction throughout my life as an educator, teaching American Literature, World Literature and Creative Writing in college-preparatory schools. For years it has struck me that it is very hard to find good contemporary short stories, not because they are not being written, but because they are either unpublished or are published briefly by a review and then disappear, never to be read and appreciated by most of us. This is beyond unfortunate.

So I decided to leave the school world and start a publication which is devoted completely to the short story and its author. Short Story America is dedicated to advancing modern short stories, while also keeping hundreds of classic stories readily accessible online in a classy format, unlittered by nuisance advertisements swimming along the margins of the page. Short stories deserve to be read, and not just in the year and venue in which they were published.

So I started Short Story America, in the hope that others felt the same way. Many new friendships later, I’m glad I did. 

Read the rest of the interview here: 
http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/interview-with-t-d-johnston-founder-of-short-story-america/

Yesterday I officially launched my first e-book: If You Go Into The Woods. If you haven’t heard already, you can read more about that here.

In today's post I cover my fifteen minutes of fame, how I raced up the bestseller charts on my first day, leapfrogging other unknown writers like Stephen King, Virginia Woolf, and some guy called William Shakespeare.

I also explain some of the mistakes that I made, and how you can avoid them, and finished with a little teaser for my next release.

Read the whole post here:  My Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Sales, Bestseller Charts & Mistakes

Goodbye fame, I never really knew you,

Dave 

I have some exciting news. I set up my own publishing company – Arriba Arriba Books – to publish my short stories as e-books. You can read them on your laptop, computer, iPhone, smartphone, iPad, or e-reader. The first release – IF YOU GO INTO THE WOODS – is available now from Amazon UK for only 86p.

I have a special deal to kick things off – two stories for the price of one – both creepy tales set in a world that’s not quite right.

For quick taste of what you get for 86p and to see the amazing cover, either go to my blog, or see the listing on Amazon UK. If you have an e-reader other than a Kindle, you can buy it at Smashwords. If you are outside the UK, you can buy it at Amazon US for $0.99. 

You can read an e-book on any computer or smartphone by downloading a free piece of software from Amazon. Click here to download it. You will need to do this before you can purchase any e-books. Once you have installed the program, you can download a free sample of any e-book before buying, including mine.

For the full story of how I went from an idea to being published in less than a month, and to read my free guide to getting your own stories into (digital) print, please visit my blog: Let's Get Digital, Digital.

Enjoy,

Dave 

I have some exciting news.

A few months back Short Story America chose one of my stories to appear in their Anthology of their Best Stories of 2010. It just got released today. My story that was chosen is called Into The Woods.    

The collection is a monster: 56 stories in total – 544 pages – which should keep you going for a while. I've read a few of the other stories in the collection and they are excellent. 

There are paperback, e-book, and audio (both MP3 and CD) versions planned for later in the year, but this hardback version is a limited edition, signed by the editor T.D. Johnston.

Here are some early reviews:

“Witness the renaissance within the pages of Short Story America. New life to literature! These stories are food for the famished souls of today’s readers.”

     -- Thomas Fortenberry, author, editor and former judge of The Georgia Author of the Year Awards and The Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction.

“Short Story America is literary fiction at its best!” 

     -- Myra King, author, winner of the Global Short Story Prize

To read more, please go to: My Blog

 

Yesterday we surveyed the short story market, where you can find the right magazines for your stories, how you can sell the same story again as a reprint and to an anthology, why short story collections are such a hard-sell to publishing houses, and how and when you should self-publish them.

 

Today we are going to talk about novels.  There are only two real ways to sell your novel, and the choices are, for the most part, mutually exclusive, so you have a big decision to make.  The first way is to a trade publishing house (both large presses and small, independent presses), and the second is to self-publish.

Read the rest at:  Making Money From Writing, Part 2: Novels

People write for all sorts of reasons, but today we are going to talk about how to make money out of your stories. Whether you write short stories or novels, or anything in between, there are a number of different markets out there. If you are aiming to make a living from your stories, or at least supplement your income, you should be aware of all of them.

In today's post I talk about short story markets both online and offline. I explain how you can find the right magazines to sell your stories to, where you can sell reprints of that same story, how to get into anthologies, the realities of a publisher accepting a short story collection, as well as how, and most importantly, when you should self-publish short stories to maximise your income.

Read the rest at: Making Money From Writing, Part 1: Short Story Markets

 

Right, one of my short stories has been summarily rejected.  So I sent out another one a while back to a different organisation. 

I write 'genre' stuff, so am feeling that I'm wasting my time here.  Even if the theme is supposedly open, as far as I can tell, the winning stories have modern settings.

So, I've sent off the other one, which, according to my writing course tutor, 'fits the genre very well'  It was the first time the G word was thrown at me, and only my second completed story :)  It was tweaked for sending off and I just want the rejection over and done with now.

I think I'm more antsy about this one due to it being sent to a genre publication.  Just put me out of me misery, will you!  I can see I will just have to get over the 'pain'  barrier with this lark, so that I maintain a cooly neutral frame of mind about it all :)

The short story as a form has been ‘dying’ for at least as long as the publishing industry has.  An article can’t mention it without saying it is “moribund” or in “rude health”.  People either devour them, or ignore them.  But what is it about the humble short that divides opinion so?

Read the rest on my blog: http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com