Where Micro Weird Came From

I thought I might occasionally try a new feature here on the blog wherein I talk about the genesis of certain projects. Today’s choice is Micro Weird:Tiny Tales of the Strange. Back at the end of 2012, I was working on the third piece in my Fiction Techniques series, “The Twist Ending.” As part of the research for that work, I both read and wrote a number of flash fiction pieces with twist endings, and I went back and analyzed all the twist ending stories I’d written in the past. A lot of things became clear during that period.

FictionTechniques #3: The Twist Ending, was published in January of 2013, and I’d already started to consider publishing a collection of the twist ending pieces I’d written. Turns out I had quite a few of them lying around that had not been collected, and over the next couple of months I wrote several more.

In March 2013, I published these under the title Micro Weird: Tiny Tales of the Strange. Micro Weird is the most eclectic collection I’ve ever produced. It contains horror stories, science fiction tales, humor, and even some mainstream pieces. The common denominator that ties the stories together is the “twist ending.” If you like twist-ending tales, Micro Weird might be just the collection for you. It’s only 99 cents.

Here’s the Table of Contents for the collection:

AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART

EYE SPY

SEASON OF RUST

HIGH IQ

GIVING UP THE GHOST

PAST PERFECT

LOVE STORIES

THAT CAT IS ON DRUGS, MAN

INSPIRATION

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

A FACE ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE

FAR BEYOND HOME

THOUGHT FLOW

THE TEETH OF THE WIND

FOREVER, OUT OF LOVE

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Last Blog of 2013

Like some novels I’ve read, 2013 started out pretty good, sagged seriously in the middle, then picked up toward the end. Not the greatest year but still better in almost all ways than the years 2010 through 2012, each of which saw major family losses and serious illnesses strike. I’m glad at least the trend for health issues was up.

School was school. No great victories. No great tragedies. I’m glad for that. I do like things on an even keel. Personally, Lana and I continue to be very happy together, although Lana did have some serious back issues for several months that caused us great concern. The worst of that seems to have passed.

In writing, I mentioned before that I wrote about 80,000 professional words, which I’m confident was up from the years 2010-2012. The best thing was the completion of the fourth book in the Talera series, which should be out in 2014. I did not have any books published through Borgo/ Wildside in 2013 and much of that was because I’d decided to focus on some long term projects and some personal self-publishing concepts I had.

In early 2013 I put up the three volumes of the FictionTechniques series, “Creating Suspense,” “Characters Wanted,” and “The Twist Ending.” These actually sold pretty well, although I have not gotten many reviews on them. They also helped earn me a couple of speaking engagements, which is nice.

In the spring I put up MicroWeird: Tiny Tales of the Strange. Despite garnering 4 five star reviews, it did not sell well and ultimately has been my slowest seller of any self-published title. In the fall, though, I put up The Machineries of Mars, which also gained 4 five star reviews but which has far outsold “Micro Weird.” It’s been my best seller since Harvest of War.

The only other publishing related thing I did was putting the Louisiana Inklings anthology into print. I was glad to learn how to do this and may start doing print editions of some of my other self-published work in the days to come.

All in all, a pretty good year that reversed the trends I’d been experiencing in the three years previously. Let’s hope I can keep the momentum going into 2014. And let’s hope that all of us here in the blogosphere have a great 2014 with lots of success. 

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MicroWeird is Coming

Sometime in the next few weeks I'm going to self publish a collection of my flash fiction stories under the title MicroWeird: Tiny Tales of the Strange. The stories are already collected and edited, though I'll give them one more read through, and I've got an idea for the cover but need to work on that a bit more. Xavier is closed for Easter Break during the week of March 25-29, so the final touches will probably get done then.

The plans are for 16 stories, with a total word count of around 10,000. Not counting the "about the stories" section, which I always include, the stories will average about 600 words a piece. Quite a few are shorter, and a couple are less than fifty words long. Only three of these have been published before, and only one of those three in anything folks reading this blog may have seen. The price will be 99 cents.

Most of you know I tend be varied in what I write, but this collection has some stories in it that are weird even by my relaxed standards of the strange. Although most of the stories have been written over the past few years with a "Microweird" kind of publication in mind, two of the tales were written during the years before I ever published anything at all. Two others were written and submitted time and again without getting accepted. One of those went to seventeen places without a taker. You might think I'd take that as a sign that it's not very good, but the problems with that are: 1) I think the story is really good myself, and 2) readers I've shown the story to love it. I just think most of the editors I've sent it to have had no idea what to do with it.

Of course, most of these tales will have a "twist ending."  In fact, it was working on the newer stories in this collection that led to Fiction Techniques #3: The Twist Ending, which is one of the writing tip articles I recently put up on Amazon.



So, COMING SOON:  Just when you thought Gramlich couldn't get any stranger. MicroWeird!
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Massive Quantities!

Massive quantities of grading struck last night and this morning. (23 term papers and 32 essays.) You might say I'm having a gradepocalypse, and will certainly be digging out for a while. We also have faculty interviews today and Monday. That means I won't be able to visit blogs much for the next few days, probably until at least Monday or Tuesday. I will keep you all in mind, however.

In the meantime, the exceptional Ty Johnston,  over at life on the written page has reviewed the first two of my Fiction Techniques series of ebooks. And he said nice things!  I hope you'll get a chance to check it out. And have a look at Ty's own offerings of both print and ebooks. He's got a range of items listed HERE.  I've mostly read his fantasy stuff, which is excellent.

Take care.

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School and Writing

School has started again and I’ve been swamped. Classes actually don’t begin until Monday but there are many, many things teachers have to do before that first class period.  That’s why I haven’t been visiting blogs for a couple of days. I got around to some this morning since it’s been relatively quiet.  

The Fiction Techniques Freebies are over now. I gave away 255 copies of Fiction Techniques #1: Creating Suspense, and 297 copies of #2: Characters Wanted. Sold 9 copies of #3: The Twist Ending. I did notice that someone bought Write With Fire also. At least, the numbers improved on it for a while. I hope people find the articles useful.  For those of you who checked the “Techniques” articles out, tell me honestly what you thought of the covers.  I know they aren’t highly salient but I wanted to make the connection to the ebook publishing revolution so that’s why I used screen shots. I hope they don’t look too cheesy.

I have been writing since the start of the New Year. Most of this has actually been revision of earlier materials, though I have produced a couple of new flash fictions. In the next month or so I’m going to publish a collection of twisted flash fictions and my working title for that is “Micro Weird: Tiny Tales of the Strange.” After that I will turn my attention back to some short westerns, and then begin work on a longer project. I have at least two long projects in various stages of completion, although who knows where inspiration will take me.

Here’s hoping everyone’s New Year is off to a good start!

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Fiction Techniques #2: Characters Wanted is Free

Fiction Techniques #1: Creating Suspense, is no longer free (.99 cents), but Fiction Techniques #2: Characters Wanted, is free now for a few days. If you're a writer, these should be of interest to you. 255 free copies of #1 were picked up, so I hope I'll hear from some folks about it and whether it was helpful.  I also noticed that the numbers for Write With Fire, showed improvement so it looks like someone picked up my writing book as well.

I'm not planning on making Fiction Techniques #3: The Twist Ending, free. It's just 99 cents, though. It's a brand new piece that goes into detail about how to create twist endings, for both stories and for novel chapters that can be used as cliffhangers.

Anyway, if you are interested in writing and haven't gotten your copy of "Characters Wanted," it's up free right now, and will remain that way a couple more days.

Have a great day!

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Fiction Techniques #1 is Free

On my last blog I mentioned uploading three articles for Kindle in what I'm calling the "Fiction Techniques Series.  The first one in the series, Fiction Techniques #1: Creating Suspense, is free today and for the next two days.

The second one, Fiction Techniques #2: Characters Wanted, will go up for free after that for a few days. These are both expansions on material that was included in my nonfiction book on writing, Write With Fire. The third one, Fiction Techniques #3: The Twist Ending, is brand new so I probably won't make it free. It's just 99 cents, though.

If you're a writer, why not try the free one and see if you find the series helpful. If folks do find them helpful, I may write more.  And there is always Write With Fire, which has many other articles and essays on writing, including tip pieces and marketing pieces.



Happy New Year
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