First Short Story Posted!

I am pleased to announce that my short story, "The Rapture" has been posted on Black Coffee Fiction, the blog Wade Peterson and I set up this week, http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com/

Wade reported that two days ago, we had received 90 "hits" so we assume that our stories are being read, which is, after all, the first goal of writers.  (The second goal is to be paid and we think that will come with time.)

I first began thinking about this blog when I was in Augusta, Montana, population 284.  The head librarian there had instituted a short story reading club, which fit more into the time constraints of most of her patrons who didn't have the time to read full length books each month   I liked the thought.

Short stories aren't published much any more.  Decades ago, almost every magazine had a short story section. Over the years they've disappeared.  Even Redbook discontinued its short story contest. This has left the Internet as one of the few places where one can regularly read short fiction. The problem is that most of the sites don't pay anything.  There is something truly awful about having a piece rejected by a publisher that wouldn't pay us anything anyhow. 

So Wade and I hatched the idea of doing our own blog.  This way we have total control over our work and in time, we can monetize the site and perhaps make a few dollars. Best of all, we are being read.  I often think of Emily Dickinson who wrote, "This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me."   These are the stories we want you to read.

At present, we each are writing a story every other week.  That means I must write 26 stories over the course of a year. I have a few stockpiled, but I can't wait until I run out. What this has given us is something we both require:  deadlines.  

We assume that after a year or so, we'll have enough stories for a collection or two.  Then we'll think about self-publishing. 

(Note that Wade and I are not editors, so we are not accepting submissions from writers other than those in our critique group.) '

Hey, we're being read!  Life is getting better and better.