Micro Weird Has Landed

As I hoped, I was able to put the finishing touches on my collection called Micro Weird: Tiny Tales of the Strange over spring break. It is now available for both Nook and Kindle, at 99 cents. There are fifteen stories and a postscript about flash fiction. It’s over 10,000 words total but only about 8,000 of that is fiction. There’s also a section telling “about” the stories, which is something I like to do and something I like to read from other authors.

You all know I like variety in my writing. Well, this is the most varied collection I’ve yet put together. There’s some stuff in here that would be considered horror, albeit mild, some SF stuff, some humor, a children’s story, and a number of pieces that are really unclassifiable. I suspect there’s some things that will surprise even those who have read most of my previous work. Most of the pieces in Micro Weird were written in the last couple of years, but a few stories go back decades, including one (revised) that dates from the early 1980s. Only three of the tales have been previously published, and only one in anything some of you may have seen.

Despite the variety in the stories, there are two things that hold the collection together. First, all the stories are short, with the longest being about 1200 words. Most are quite a bit shorter. These days, these lengths are identified as either flash fiction or micro-fiction. Second, all the pieces strive for a twist ending.

The cover photo was taken by Lana outside Meteor Crater a couple of years back. We saw what looked like a giant picture hanging on the wall, and a man leaning “through” the picture smoking a cigarette. The “picture” was actually a rectangular opening in the brick wall. It was rather surreal to see, though. Lana did the blacking out of the figure so he’d be in silhouette, and I did the lettering. I used her “Gimp” program to manipulate things and it seemed far superior to Paint so I’m going to download a free copy of it for myself.

I hope you enjoy Micro Weird. I had a lot of fun writing these tales. If you want, you can pick ‘em up at:

Barnes and Noble.

As always, thanks for reading!

-----

-----

Ebook Consideration

OK, I’m thinking of publishing an ebook through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform. It looks like a fairly easy process, and I’ve actually set up a book, although I have no idea at the moment what it’s likely to look like after it’s published. I guess I’ll find out, because I’m pretty committed to giving this a try. Here’s why.

1. I have some western tales, two long and one short, that I’d like to make available in a collected format. But, there is not enough material to pitch as a collection to a regular publisher. It’ll be a total of about 60 pages, which seems pretty good for an ebook, if I make sure to let folks know that it’s not a full novel’s worth of material and if I price it accordingly.

2. I’ve been wanting to try something like this because I hear that some folks are doing pretty well selling Kindle ebooks that they published themselves. And I really do believe that ebooks are going to continue to grow in popularity for a good while, even though I don’t think they will ever completely replace printed books.

3. I’m also interested in doing a little publishing under what I intend to call a Razored Zen Imprint. They say every actor wants to direct. Well maybe every writer (or just this one, and David Cranmer, and Sidney Williams, and Bret Funk) wants to publish. And this seems like a good way to get my feet wet in the process.

So. What do you guys think? Any great advice? Any caveats? Anybody want to give me a few million bucks to set up Razored Zen Press?
-----
-----