Tag Archives: short stories

ARTIE AND THE LONG-LEGGED WOMAN

It’s December, and many people don’t have time to take a break and read a book. I have a great solution–short stories. I’ve written a slew of them, but some of my favorites star Artie, a hapless burglar who keeps bumping into beautiful women who need help. Artie and the Long-Legged Woman was the first I had published in this series by Untreed Reads, and so I’m particularly fond of it. There’s more info about it on my short story page–click on the cover there. But here’s a taste of what’s to come–the first two paragraphs of the story:

Artie watched with horror as first one beautiful leg emerged from the white limousine and then a second equally gorgeous leg followed. He held his athletic bag tightly in his gloved left hand, his right hand on the doorknob, ready to leave the jewelry store out the back exit into the alley. But there were the limo, and the legs, and here he was, holding the goods.

Artie sighed. He closed the door quietly behind him and started to walk away. Maybe the woman belonging to the legs wouldn’t notice. Sure.

Artie_Long-Legged_Woman_finalAnd also, the first paragraph (the rest of which you can see on the page dedicated to this story) of a very nice review:

I think I’m in love! Artie, why couldn’t you really exist, you conniving thief, you. Unfortunately, even if you were a real live person, I’m sure I wouldn’t fit the bill. No long legs here. Could I maybe win you over with a smile? I’d love to have those jewels you steal in my hands, even if just for a few minutes. I admit, I would be overly worried that you would get nicked by the po-po though. Now that would make for many a sleepless nights.

Isn’t that great? Really, I did NOT write it myself. I hope you will check out all the Artie stories, 99 cents or less,, depending on whether you buy them at Amazon or Untreed Reads (the publisher), links on the dedicated page. Or anywhere else you can buy ebooks, in any format out there.

HAPPY DECEMBER!

PAPER OR PLASTIC (WHERE THE COMPUTER IS THE PLASTIC)?

I’ve tried to put everything on the computer. Names and addresses of everyone I know. All the financial info. A calendar. Photographs. A map program that uses GPS. The family tree. And that’s just the personal stuff. For my writing, everything original I write, of course, now gets written on my laptop. But also the trackers and market lists, notes about each novel or story, writing advice, quotes, and so on.

When we lived in the small space of a forty-foot motorhome all the time, this is a great idea. Now that we’re back in a brick and stick house, I still think it’s a great idea.

But I write a lot of short stories, and submitting them is much work in itself.

I found out tables are my friends.
Wooden Table by Anonymous - A wooden table by Benji Park. From old OCAL site.

No, not that kind of table.

I used to have:

A notebook in which I put:

  • A table to track everything I submitted with title, where submitted, date submitted, date back, and a yes/no column for whether accepted or rejected. This was kept in the front of the notebook.
  • Behind that, a table for each publication and what I’d sent to them when, and how long it took to hear back.

A manila file folder for each story in which I had:

  • A table to track date, where sent and response for the front of the file.
  • Correspondence and contract(s) for the story.
  • A clean printed copy of the story.

All these trackers, the manuscript and notes for it were put onto my laptop after a awhile. And there they still sit. It took quite a long time for me to get used to using the ones on the computer.

Today I was checking out some markets. I have about twenty stories at any given time that need to be submitted. So of course I’m always looking for new places for my work. I have in mind one place to submit to this week (my goal is one sub a week), but when going through my list, I found two other places where a couple of stories might fit. How to keep track of those? Used to be I could just jot a note and stick it in the physical file. So, I made up a notes form (yes, another form) for each story. It now contains the submission table at the top, and other notes about the story, plus I can list possible markets I come across to submit to if it’s rejected. And I just stick any other info about the story into this notes file. Which is called [Title of Story] notes.docx. I use caps for the title of the story file and the notes file name in small letters.

Often, I find the submission guidelines on-line and need to keep them someplace. Easiest thing in the world is to bookmark them, right? Yes, except you wouldn’t believe how many bookmarks I have. I was putting these new ones at the top, and important ones got pushed farther and farther down, and I had a jumble.

I hate jumbles. So eventually I made yet another table to keep the names of all these wonderful publications with a direct URL link to their submission guidelines. I also have a column for word count so I don’t have to look that up each time. And to make it easier on myself, later I added a column to put in the title of my latest submission.

Another trick I tried was to have a document in my computer labeled Notes. This is where I type in random ideas and thoughts plus URLs to go to when I have time. I guess I should have one of these documents for writing, too. The trouble is, I tried this idea several years ago, stopped using it and have never gone back to see what’s there. So I ended up still using a small legal pad to jot down things that catch my attention.

Yes, paper can get lost on the a real desktop. But ideas and jottings can get lost on that virtual desktop, too. This is as close as I can come to a pretty good system.

Someday I’ll find the perfect system. You think?

A SHORT HISTORY OF GETTING MY STUFF PUBLISHED

Organized to Death is my third published novel. My first one was put out by a small press that gave me a contract for three novels. They published Sara’s Search on time and with a cover I loved. When the month of June came around to publish the second novel, though, it didn’t happen. Several months went by. Promises were made to publish it in October. It had a cover (I didn’t love it as much as the first one, though), it had been edited, and the galleys had been proofed. Christmas came and went, and all of January. I found out that several other writers with the same publisher were having the same problems. Royalty checks stopped. The publisher no longer answered phone calls or emails. We all became quite concerned. And unfortunately, as a group, we decided to pull our books and ask for the rights back to those already published. Of course, the publisher’s reputation was ruined, and we all left, sadder but wiser.  Some writers went with other small presses, and several had bad luck with them, as well. I wrote some more novels. I sent them to NY agents. Nothing happened. I was reluctant to try another small publisher. (Another one, WriteWay, had shown interest in another of my books before I placed Sara’s Search , but they went bankrupt before any contracts were signed, so I was leery—authors there, as far as I know, never got their rights back.) By this time I had the one published novel and over fifty short stories as publication credits. Didn’t matter.

Then something unexpected happened. Ebooks, thanks to Amazon, started to become popular. Writers who had no luck with NY publishing decided to strike out on their own and get their books up for ebook readers. This was not too difficult to do. I watched and waited. I saw that some readers were unhappy with the books coming out because they were poorly written, had glaring spelling and grammar mistakes, and were badly formatted. I also noticed that many of the covers did not look very professional, and many were too dark to be able to read the title and/or authors’ names on the tiny thumbnails used on-line. So I decided to hire a professional cover artist, and between us, this is what we came up with:I still like it. Next, the authors I read about who were successful hired professional editors and proofreaders to go over their manuscripts. And finally, if they couldn’t do a good job themselves, they hired yet a third person to format the work for them.

This is what I did with all three of my novels. Sara’s Search, of course, already had a graphic designer, Clint Gage, do the cover (and I got the rights for that, as well) and an editor pointed out everything that needed fixing. For Revelations, I hired Anne Victory to do the editing, and Derek Murphy to do the cover (he also did the cover for Warning Signs, my short story collection). I admit to formatting all three of those books myself (no need for an editor for the short story collection—they’d already been published, so edited). For Organized to Death, I again used Anne and Derek and because there are so many different sized Kindles out there now, decided to use a professional formatter, Jason Anderson who did a great job on both the ebook and print formatting. I will be using all three again, if they’re available, for my next books—hopefully three more next year.

Someday I may change the cover for Sara’s Search because it’s too dark to show up well in a thumbnail. I also want a new paperback version, so that would need to have a back cover.

And that’s it so far. I’m open to questions, and if they’d take  a long-enough answer, that could become another blog post. So, ask away.

 

WRITING SHORT STORIES

Even some famous novelists will tell you they have trouble writing short stories, and some say they cannot write them at all.

Since I have a much easier time writing short stories than novels, I decided to try to figure out why that’s so. Or at least how you can do it yourself.

It may be obvious, but if you’re a novelist, you’re thinking on a grand scale. You fill your story with characters and subplots. And even settings.

For shorts, you need to hone in on probably one or two characters, one problem/plot point, only a setting or two, and forget about subplots.

Timeframe is also different. Most likely, a short story takes place in a short amount of time. You don’t usually wrap up your main character’s whole life in the story. Instead, you use a fascinating incident to point up your protagonist’s good and bad points. Give her a problem to solve, an interesting setting, another character or two to talk to and you’re good to go.

Often mystery writers say they have a problem writing a puzzle mystery in the short form. I agree this is very hard to do, so I rarely write that type of story. You need at least three clues and a red herring or two. You need three or four suspects. And a villain, plus the protagonist. The setting is often important in a puzzle mystery. It can be done, has been done, but it’s very difficult.

I’ve only written a couple of short story puzzle mysteries. Instead I write what are called crime stories. These are stories that, obviously, have crimes in them, but are not necessarily traditional mysteries. The reader may know right from the beginning who did it. There may not be anyone even interested in solving the crime. Other things are going on in the story.

If you want to write short crime stories, I suggest you find several of your favorites and deconstruct them to find out why they appeal to you. With the bones of your favorite, make up your own characters and settings and see what you come up with. You may surprise yourself. If you try this, please come back and let me know how it went. And of course, who published it. Think positive!

FOUR RULES FOR GETTING YOUR SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED

After several years of writing, submitting, and watching other writers and wannabes, I have come to realize the importance of these four rules for getting published in the short form. Since I’ve had over 50 short stories published, I feel confident that these hints will work for you:

  1. Write every day, or at least five or six days a week. Set aside a time, and apply the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair, and write. Aim for 1,000 words each day.
  2. Finish a huge majority of the stories you start. I have seen so many writers start lots of projects and never finish any of them. Of course, these stories will never see publication.
  3. Read every day. When you are a beginner, it does, in my opinion, help to read how-to books about writing, creativity and motivation. It’s better to learn about  point of view, for example, from a book than from the editor who rejects your manuscript because your POV is inconsistent and confusing. Read in the genre you wish to write in. And read in genres you plan never to write in. It’s all good for you.
  4. Submit every week. If you submit one piece each week, that equals fifty-two submissions a year! Of course, at first you will have to work up to a significant number of stories to submit. If you write every day, you will soon have enough. Aim to write one short story a week or at least every two weeks, and within a year, you will see major improvement in your writing and hopefully, some acceptances. If you get a rejection, immediately send that story out again. It can count for the one that week.

I admit, I used a critique group to help me meet the goal of writing at least one short story every two weeks for a few years. Having other people waiting for something to read from you is a great motivator. If you can’t join a group, at least find a critique partner or two. Try it. And let me know if it works for you.