As you may know, in the past I've been known to dabble in fiction. My novels Danny Yates Must Die and Mr Landen has no Brain (HarperCollins/Voyager) are still spoken of in hushed whispers wherever people have laryngitis. Likewise, my short stories were once scattered around genre periodicals, like chaff.
Years ago, however, I gave up the lure of lying for a living, to concentrate on telling the unvarnished truth in blogs like this one.
But a man can only resist making things up for a limited spell, and now I'm back in the making-things-up department, with three short stories available for download on Amazon's Kindle Store. At last I know how Stan Lee and Jack Kirby felt all those decades ago when they started a shocking new era in publishing by launching issue #1 of the Fantastic Four on the world.
Not only do these stories have words in them but they're as cheap as the bloke who wrote them. Who says this isn't the Steve Age of Bargains?
Available for download at:
Amazon US. Amazon UK. Amazon Germany. Amazon France. Amazon Italy. Amazon Spain.
Just why has the man she finds there been sat alone for so long?
Why has his expected visitor never arrived?
And what is the secret of the shoebox he's meant to have delivered all those years ago?
Available for download at:
Amazon US. Amazon UK. Amazon Germany. Amazon France. Amazon Italy. Amazon Spain.
Just who is behind the least likely award nomination of all time?
Will Liz Sanford finally get to use that coffin with her name on it?
And who is that woman in the cupboard?
Available for download at:
Thank you for your time - Steve.
Cover image credits:
Carrying:
Self-Portrait by Moonlight by Alessandro Zangrilli (self-made for wiki) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
&
Moon at its Fullest a Few Minutes Before the Lunar Eclipse of 20 Feb 2008 by Thom Rains [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Waiting for the Wireman in 1974:
Noche de luna llena by Luz A. Villa from Medellin, Colombia (Noche de luna llena - Full moon night) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
The Weakest Link:
by moi.
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2 comments:
I hope you have better luck with the Kindle experience than what I've been having, Steve. I made available my 2004 chapbook of tanka and haiku, October Twilight, a few months ago; I don't think anyone has noticed its presence as of yet.
Does your stories have boy-wizards? Vampires who lust after pubescent girls in thong knickers? If so, then your work may have a fighting chance in the electronic universe. If one can capture that prize audience of young women aged 18 to 28 who still think like 10-year olds, then one may well be in the money.
I think building a reputation with the aforementioned prize audience by churning out a few commercial titles may be the way to go. From there, the readers may take an interest in one's other, more serious work.
Whatever the case, I have two more old haiku chapbooks of mine to make available, as well as a collection of dark semiautobiographical short stories, and a book of essays on Laird Koenig's old novel/film, The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane. I'm probably wasting my time and energy.
If you any success, please share notes.
Sadly, it's nearly always the case that "art" sells less well than "entertainment". Fortunately, I have both arty and entertainmenty leanings, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.
So far, I've not been setting the world on fire but it's early days. I've just added a novel to my list of available Kindle books - the mighty Fatal Inheritance - and I'm in the planning stages of my next novel, which is my first story written specifically for Kindle.
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