hough I've hardly written any short stories over the past 8 or 10 years, and the few I did bang out were mostly Diablo II fan fiction I wrote to post on the D2 site on Halloween, I have dozens and dozens of older ones, mostly written when I was in college back in the early 90s.  Most of them aren't any good by my current standards, and I've hadn't even glanced at them in over a decade until Malaya kept poking me about digging through my old stuff to see if any of it was any good.  So I did, and as I did I blogged about it. And the results of that are here.

All of my online short stories can be seen on the Writing Index page.

The updates here proceed downwards in chronological order.

October 13, 2003

Malaya's idea of late is that I should finally get off my ass (not literally) and go over a bunch of my old short stories, edit and update them some, and do something with them.  While my ambition has always been limited to putting them online with some comments, she thinks I should get 300 pages or so of them and pay for some small press to publish them in an actual paperback book type thing.  One that I would then sell to recoup expenses, give people a way to contribute to this site (sort of), give people a cool collectible that would no doubt be worth a fortune if I'm a big best selling type author in 10 years, and give me a résumé boosting type of thing.  Plus it would just be fun and cool to have a real book with my name on it.

I wasn't real enthused about this initially; it sounded like a lot of work for no real reward.  However after some thought and persuasion, I guess I'm up for it.  I always mean to/want to get my old stories into a modern format (they were all written in obsolete word processing programs and are all screwy in format now) and get them where people could read them, so why not? I don't imagine I'd make any money out of it, but people are often emailing me here and at the D2 site saying they'd pay money for my actual published work.  So why not put that to the test?  heh

I'd probably put a few of the stories online, so people who just wanted to surf could see some of the new (old recovered) stuff, but I'd have to leave most of it for the print form only or the book wouldn't have any selling point, other than being something you could pay money for and justify it as a gift or donation to my (website's) continued well-being.

I would also include notes or comments on the stories in the book, or perhaps just do those online, so anyone could read them, but they'd have to buy the book to get the actual story in question.

Anyway, I'm open to comments or suggestions or requests or whatever about this, pro or con.  It's not anything imminent so I'm certainly not taking orders yet, nor am I asking if you'd be interested in buying it to give me some sort of rough idea of how many copies I'll need.  I'm simply floating the idea for any ideas or input anyone might have.  Play along, pretend I'm doing a fiction book. What would you want to see it in that you can't see on the website? And keep in mind that this is low budget and won't have any photos, so no Flux and/or Malaya porn.  Additional notes on the stories?  More stories?  New stories? Blog mentions of my writing?

Also, we haven't done any research on self publishing prices or press runs sizes or legal issues yet, so I can't give even a ballpark figure for the price.  I imagine we'll get a couple hundred printed up, that depends on the price and quality of paper stock and such.  As for the price, I can't make any estimates, but this would be something for publicity and the experience of it, not something we'd try to do much more than recoup expenses with.  I'd suspect it would cost a bit more than a paperback you can get at your local book store, since I'm not printing them at the cheap 500,000 at a time rate publishers do, and I'd have to include something for the shipping in the price. But 1) I really don't know anything about the prices for self-publishing, and 2) since it's my work it would be better than the usual paperback too, and therefore worth more, right? *cough*

And it's like The Collector's Item too!

October 14, 2003

Yesterday, I floated the concept of me putting together a collection of my short stories and publishing it in paperback form, and asked for reader input.  Thanks for your input, and though no one had any comments on what sort of content or design I should go for, several people said they'd be interested in it, and a couple had suggestions how to go about it.  One reader by the name of Beth even sent me the link to a publisher that put her dad's book into print.

I also liked this comment, from Mike:

Fantastic! Truly I think all us guys would still be sitting around in caves if it were up to us (and our lives were not actually controlled by women). Another way for you to get some recognition, and some practice, would be by getting a short story printed in a sci-fi or fantasy magazine.

Don't let my idea distract you though. Publishing and distributing a small run book is going to be a fantastic experience for you. You'll learn a lot about the finances of the business as well as how to turn a "story" into a book. I do not know the numbers myself, but I bet you that the actual cost of this will be higher than whatever $ amount you have in your head right now.

He's right about the women motivating men part; my biggest pusher to get something finished and published was always my mom, at least until I hooked up with Malaya.  Now you could point out that both are women who love me and want the best for me, and you'd be correct, but hey, who else but people who care about you are going to take the time to encourage you to be the best you can be?

As for the financial issue that Mike mentions, I have no idea, but I'm lucky enough to have a wonderful girlfriend who is very interested in financial wheelings and dealings and likes to research things and comparison shop.  I hate doing that sort of thing, so it's nice that Malaya compliments my weak spot so well.

As for the actual work involved in editing old stories and writing new ones, I got through a couple of old ones yesterday and today, and they weren't bad.  All I have done with them thus far is read over them and put them into a readable format, but I can see them being publicly presentable with a bit of editing.

October 21, 2003

Yesterday I revealed, at the end of a long reply to a reader mail about Lovecraft, that I had recently HTML'ed one of my old short stories, and asked for some reader feedback on it, since it's in a rather different style than most of my fiction.  Here's a short excerpt (somewhat edited since yesterday) to give you a sense of the writing style of it, which I'll call "old fashioned" or "Lovecraftian" though it's not really either of those.

The story is narrated by a female, who has just received a letter from the strange elderly butler of her husband's uncle's estate.

The letter shared the doubtless well-kept secret that the mansion was "...decayed through the ratherly, rooms that are impassable and [indecipherable] to hallways and upper stairs."

As well as imparting that, "Archibald habitated through the kitchens and basements mainly, never coming to outside for the yards, even for [indecipherable] yellow winters..."

There the line reached the edge of the page and vanished.  The next line began over an inch down the paper, and addressed an entirely different topic, leaving the "yellow winters" mention unresolved.

David and I spent hours deciphering the letter, with little success.  Adding to our difficulties with the content, the actual penmanship was treacherous.  Numerous words were smudged or smeared, testaments to the actual fountain pen, ("Or quill." as David remarked, only half in jest) it had been written with.  Often words in the middle of a sentence were obliterated, and I don't mean they were struck through, or even scratched out.  They were obliterated, drowned in splatters of the oddly-tinted ink that appeared to be intentional.

Anyway, click here to read the whole (unfinished) story, see the notes for what I'm considering doing with it, and let me know what you think, pro or con or indifferent.  This story is about the only one of the old fragmentary stories that I'd actually consider finishing up, since I can see where the plot would go and I think it would be pretty good in final form. Not to mention the fact that it's in a very different style than that which I usually write in.

As for the overall process of updating and HTML'ing my old stories, it's going well.  I've been doing 2 or 3 every day, when I've had the time, and while I'm not overjoyed at the quality of them, I've mostly done the earliest ones thus far, stuff I wrote while I was still a teenager.  About the best thing I can say is that it gives me a clear reading of how much my writing has improved since then.  The old stories have flashes of quality, and lots of interesting ideas, but they are very uneven and need improvements throughout to achieve a quality that I'd be proud of today.

Overall, I'd say I'm about 1/4 done, and have thus far done about a dozen stories, including two novellas I wrote over a dozen years ago.  Sadly, I don't think either of them have any commercial prospects, due to the subject matter (one is too long and boring, the other is way too gory and sexual and unpleasant) and overall quality.  But it's nice to have them in a new and readable form.  They'll either go up online (with appropriate reader cautions) or else into the paperback.

The thing I'm enjoying most about the old stories is getting to read them again now, years later, and then adding notes about them afterwards.  In a lot of cases, I think my new notes are probably more interesting than the stories, which isn't an entirely good thing, but hey, some of the old ones are pretty lame, so at least there's something interesting on the page.

As with the novellas, I can't say which of those will end up in the paperback and which I'll post online for free, nor do I know just what sort of format I'll do the book in, in terms of notes and comments on the works contained therein.  I might put in all the notes, I might put in some of the notes and have URLs in the book so people who bought it could view the rest online where ordinary site visitors couldn't see them, or I might put most of the notes online for everyone, since they would perhaps entice readers to get the book to see what story was being talked about in the notes.  It's far too early to talk about that, and I'd have to weigh things like cost per page for printing the book, giving book buyers something no one else gets, keeping the site interesting, encouraging site readers to get the book, etc.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.