One year ago today, Wade Peterson and I decided to set up a short story blog, Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com
When I was a kid, every magazine (and in those days there were lots of them) had at least one short story. My family waited for the Saturday Evening Post each month because there would be three or four or even more of those stories. I still remember some of the better ones.
Perhaps the last of the national magazines that were serious about short stories was Redbook, which even had yearly contests looking for the best.
Those days are past. Nowadays short stories only appear in college publications, literary magazines or art books, some of them on line. One of my stories was in Mobius a couple of years ago, but for no pay which is standard. Some pay in copies of the magazines. Very few offer small stipends.
I don't mind rejections, any writer must expect them, but being rejected by a publisher that wasn't going to pay me in the first place, that was too much. We decided to start the blog.
Because Wade and I publish our own stories, we bypass editors and publishers. We critique and edit each other's work. Once we're done, we can easily get our work to our readers within a day or two. We make a point of being punctual about publishing at 4:00 pm each Friday. That means each of us has to write a piece every other week. It gives us what we need most, deadlines that force us to write.
Now Bettyann Moore has joined us, which makes it much easier since we write every three weeks instead of every two. This gives us more time to work on our other projects.
Since we began Black Coffee Fiction, we've posted 53 stories. With that much to choose from, Wade and I selected what we considered the best. Black Coffee Fiction, Volume I will be published as an e-book by next week and a few days after that as a paper book.
Today, we celebrate. One year! We did it!
When I was a kid, every magazine (and in those days there were lots of them) had at least one short story. My family waited for the Saturday Evening Post each month because there would be three or four or even more of those stories. I still remember some of the better ones.
Perhaps the last of the national magazines that were serious about short stories was Redbook, which even had yearly contests looking for the best.
Those days are past. Nowadays short stories only appear in college publications, literary magazines or art books, some of them on line. One of my stories was in Mobius a couple of years ago, but for no pay which is standard. Some pay in copies of the magazines. Very few offer small stipends.
I don't mind rejections, any writer must expect them, but being rejected by a publisher that wasn't going to pay me in the first place, that was too much. We decided to start the blog.
Because Wade and I publish our own stories, we bypass editors and publishers. We critique and edit each other's work. Once we're done, we can easily get our work to our readers within a day or two. We make a point of being punctual about publishing at 4:00 pm each Friday. That means each of us has to write a piece every other week. It gives us what we need most, deadlines that force us to write.
Now Bettyann Moore has joined us, which makes it much easier since we write every three weeks instead of every two. This gives us more time to work on our other projects.
Since we began Black Coffee Fiction, we've posted 53 stories. With that much to choose from, Wade and I selected what we considered the best. Black Coffee Fiction, Volume I will be published as an e-book by next week and a few days after that as a paper book.
Today, we celebrate. One year! We did it!
No comments:
Post a Comment