You can buy Joy in a Box November 24, 2009

I am delighted to announce that
My collection of flash fiction, Joy in a Box, is now available in print. This is the perfect book to give as a gift to someone who likes to read stories that are short and sweet, because each story only takes two to three minutes to read. Put it in the downstairs restroom, beside the coffeemaker, or on the coffee table.

The sun pulled the daylight down with it, the silky nuances of dusk wrapping themselves around the strange couple, and Penny’s thoughts hovered in their folds. (Note Attached)

Genres
I’ve added as many genres as possible in the book in order to appeal to all tastes, and the stories are even clean enough for teenagers to read. Many of the stories have won placement positions in writing challenges, and others have caused readers to think, ponder, believe, imagine, reflect, feel, consider, suppose, assume, sense . . . (thesaurus, anyone?).

On went the motor of the walking machine; flip flap went the fat on the insides of Dorothy’s thighs. Dust flew abundantly in all directions. (Absolutely Fabulous!)

Reviews
“Her poignant crystal clarity of truth and honest point of view gather together in the smallest set of words for each short story. The antagonist—generally a normal aspect of any written story—isn’t entirely concrete, malleable, even visible. We’re not talking about a villain dressed in black here, or a mean old lady out to skin 101 dalmations for their fur to make coats. The conflict is something inside rather than outside. The plot is more based on thought than on action. The story moves more on the concept of memories than on events, sort of like . . . Haiku.” ~ Pierre Dominique Roustan, author of The Cain Letters

“It takes a special talent to write a complete story in a few words. Sally Hanan has that talent, and most of her stories have an interesting twist ending.” ~ Lena Nelson Dooley, award-winning author of Wild West Christmas, Christmas Love at Lake Tahoe, and Love Finds You in Golden, New Mexico

“A well-written and thought-provoking book of inspiring stories. Each story was so different. This book is about more than JOY; it stands for HOPE!” ~ Fran Lewis, author of My Name is Bertha, Bertha Speaks Out, and Bertha Fights Back

Where to buy this work of genius
You can buy Joy in a Box for $11.99, with shippping by UPS, here. I haven’t got it available on other online stores yet, as I need to come up with $99 to cover the ISBN and channel distribution costs. Yes, that’s what it costs.

She smiled—one of those fizzy drink kind of smiles that pops tiny bubbles of air to the lips over seconds of time. Then she went back to reading. (In The Orange-Sherbet Light)

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Publish your e-book with Smashwords November 16, 2009

Smashwords is a great idea Mark Coker thought up. Why not set up a site on which writers can upload their e-books for free and then sell them to the public? Mark’s beta site went public on May 6, 2008. Since then, the company has added support services, tagging, coupon generators, publishers’ pages, a marketing guide, writing contests, affiliate marketing, and distribution agreements with Barnes & Noble and Sony.

“Over one billion of the world’s roughly 6.5 billion inhabitants subsist on less than $1 a day. Paper books are simply too expensive for most of the world.” ~ Mark Coker, Smashwords

Here are some of the pros and cons of publishing an e-book with Smashwords:

PROS
—The moment your book is ready and formatted (according to the Smashwords formatting guide), you can upload your Word file and let the world read it.
—Smashwords converts the Word file into many optional reading formats to make your book compatible with most of the book-reading devices available these days. Formats available: HTML, JavaScript, Kindle, Epub, PDF, RTF, LRF, Palm doc, plain text download, plain text Web view,
—You retain all rights to your book.
—You get to decide how much of the book you want readers to preview.
—Smashwords continues to negotiate with various online retail outlets to ensure the best possible distribution potential for your book.
—Smashwords only takes a 15% fee and you get to keep the rest (and you can change the price as often as you want to).
—Writers from all over the world can publish their books with Smashwords.

“By moving books into the digital realm, we can start to change the economics of book publishing, while at the same time making great independent books available to people of all economic backgrounds from around the world.” ~ Mark Coker, Smashwords
                                                                 

CONS
—You tend to post it too quickly, before you are positive there are no formatting mistakes or before you give it the final read through.
—Most writers practically give their books away so it’s still hard to make a decent profit.
—You cannot post other people’s reviews of your book, only the reviewers can. It’s already a blessing to have someone read and review your book, so it feels even greedier to ask them to then go to the site to post the review again.
                                                                 

I began the process of uploading my flash fiction collection, Joy in a Box, a few months back, thinking it would lessen the pain of not having the printed version for a while. It’s great to have a place where readers can preview the first three stories, and, because of Smashwords’ free coupon generator, it has been extremely useful to be able to link reviewers to it.
                                                                                                                                  

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Flash, Short, Nano, Micro . . . Categorize Your Fiction July 28, 2009

Joy in a Box is an e-book (and soon to be published) collection of thirty flash-fiction stories. Because I have readers reviewing it, I was asked what flash fiction is. Most names for fiction relate to the fiction piece’s word count so I’ve made a list that gives a rough word count guide. It is not definitive, as many publishers have their own ideas on what the word count of various types of fiction should be.

Nanofiction: 55 words

Drabble: 100 words

69er: 69 words

Micro-fiction: 10-250 words (although some would say up to 750)

Flash fiction: 250-1,000 words

Sudden fiction: Slightly over 1,000 words

Short shorts: 1,001-2,500 words

Short story: 2,501-7,500 words

Novelette: 7,501-17,500 words

Novella: 17,501-40,000 words

Novel: 40,001 words and up
                                                               
Pamelyn Casto write in her article Flashes on the Meridian: Dazzled by Flash Fiction:

“Other names for it include short-short stories, sudden, postcard, minute, furious, fast, quick, skinny, and micro fiction. . . . In China this type of writing has several interesting names: little short story, pocket-size story, minute-long story, palm-sized story, and my personal favorite, the smoke-long story (just long enough to read while smoking a cigarette).”
                                                               
My own name for flash fiction would be coffee-time or toilet-visit fiction, but Americans might find the latter distasteful because then they’d have to admit to reading on the toilet. The other negative to admitting to reading on the toilet is being unable to resell your books, as George discovered (in “The Bookstore” episode of Seinfeld).

REBECCA: (Opens the cover of the book) Oh, wait a second. (Certain) This book has been in the bathroom.
GEORGE: (Nervous) Wh-what are you talking about? That – that’s ridiculous.
REBECCA: It’s been flagged. I know. I used to work in a Brentano’s.
GEORGE: (Desperate to get rid of the book) Alright, I, I’ll just take fifty. Do – do we have a deal?
REBECCA: Yeah, and here it is: You get your toilet book out of here, and I won’t jump over this counter and punch you in the brain!
                                                               

It can take a while to get the hang of writing a good piece of flash fiction as you only have a limited number of white space you can use. I used to take part in the Faithwriters weekly challenge and got so used to writing short pieces that I can now hack and slash anything that’s too long. I’d highly recommend attempting to write a complete story in less than 750 words. You must have at least one setting, one problem to be resolved, and one character because this is to be a complete story, not just a vignette (or slice of a story). The practice will make editing your novel a lot easier on the heartstrings—your writing ends up tighter and no words are wasted. Just like it is with kids at dinner time, you don’t want your readers pushing the half-eaten dish away because they are too full.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM