...my website. After years and years of rejection by the markets, I've decided to throw some of my stories up on the Internet (or is it the Web?) for public inspection, where anybody can look at them for free.
Right now it's just a short note and my three most recent stories. I plan on tweaking the whole thing over the next few months...more stories, probably, plus other notes and essays. Right now it's very bare bones.
I'd been thinking about doing it for awhile, and finally threw it together this past week. I wanted it to go up by June 30th, 2008, because it's the thirty-third anniversary of when I made my first serious attempt at writing something for submission to a market. I've privately celebrated it as a holiday of sorts, so what better way to celebrate the slight shift in my career by making this announcement?
I'd post some of my reasons for doing this here, but I'm kinda pressed for time today.
Except one thing: I expect a certain amount of criticism of these stories, of the kind this site routinely provides---but it's not primarily what I'm going for. I figure with the stories up online that somebody might spot them, read them, and maybe enjoy them. I will take what comes...if the link works.
One comment: I'd make the home page more positive. Rather than focus on the fact that the stories didn't sell, and risk driving readers away, why not focus on the themes you're interested in: give readers a reason to read.
posted
It was a pretty difficult slog, building the site, or so it seemed to me...in fact, I don't recall the name "Trellix" coming up while I was doing it. I basically ad-libbed it, learning as I went along. (For example: I started a couple of days ago with a page that said "coming soon," then couldn't figure out how to eliminate it when I finished the others, then found it had disappeared the next day.)
The copy you see there is another "ad-lib"---I wrote it and posted it then and there. I've been working on an essay, which I've mentioned a couple of times---but the thing seemed so disorganized I knew I'd have to let it lie and get back to it.
Probably that'd be even more bitter than what I put---but "bitter" is pretty much how I feel about my relationship with the SF market. It seems I'm at a point in my writing career where it's either move up to publication or move on to something else. I'll see if this satisfies my "something else" requirements. (Being bitter hasn't stopped me from writing---just yesterday I started polishing a story out of my files.)
On "stories that didn't sell"---well, not selling was the primary reason I did this the way I did. (There was more. I'll explain later.) I was sore tempted to list the when-and-where of the rejections I got---but decided against it.
Of course it's a fluid thing. I'll see how it goes. You guys are the first to know about it, but I'll let others in on it as soon as I think of who I want to let in on it.
posted
I read and write in raw html source code. Looking at the page source code revealed that Trellix is the online site builder application that myregisteredsite.com offers for consumers. The Trellix WYSIWYG application, what you see is what you get, labels source code with proprietary vendor information in the header, like all WYSIWYGs.
This is the meta tag from the page header. <META name="generator" content="Trellix Site Builder">
I looked because in the story pages there are text blocks that appeared elongated. I wanted to see why. WYSIWYGs generate unpredictable things sometimes. I found the cause of the conflict. For each block of text that looks odd, the font face tag attribute was broken by a return and numerous spaces in the middle of the font name, <font face="times new [hrt]^^^^^...roman,times" size="3"> resulting in the font attribute being conflicted on page load. ([hrt]^^^^^... indicates a hard return followed by numerous spaces.)
You've done a lot of good and hard work. I'm not criticizing, just I was curious for my own professional reasons. I read the stories because I was curious to read another writer's rejected works.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited July 01, 2008).]
posted
You could follow suit with the online publications, as well as http://www.aburt.com/ifiction/authors.shtml - I Fiction Put up a PayPal donation icon, and readers can donate if they are so inclined after reading your story.
There is no shame in this. Media is shifting. The markets are evolving drastically. Online publication is the future, regardless of what anyone says.
posted
I regret not making it clear that I'm paying for this outright. I can afford it. Not interested in donations, not interested in making money, just interested in people reading what I've written.
My "hard work" was "copy" and then "paste." That was the easy part---I was expecting a more sophisticated upload and download kind of thing. I'd prepared some HMTL files, but just used them for copying. I regret all my paragraphination disappeared, but I got used to that during my Internet Fan Fiction period.
I did set the typeface at Times New Roman twelve-point---some of you may recall the lengthy arguments I've had here and there about whether or not it's acceptable to send this to an editor. I think that discussion was the final straw---what made me decide to put the stuff online in this way.
(I say "I set..." but I don't know how it looks when it comes out at somebody else's end. I hope it's readable.)
posted
My work internet-filter thingy (you've probably guessed that I'm not very technical) didn't like your stories. It wouldn't let me access them due to judging the top story to be 'pornography', the middle one as 'occult' and the bottom one as 'match-making'.
Can't wait to read them at home..
p.s. I second everyone about you being more positive about your writing. Present it as an opportunity to view your writing, and give a hint as to what kind of stuff the writing is.
posted
Yes, it's readable. Font size="3" is equivalent to 12 point in html source code. I won't go into html formatting deprecation recommendations by W3C.
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posted
Unless the order got mixed up somehow---it came out alphabetical---only the second story has sex scenes---and even then they're not terribly erotic. There's a good deal of nudity, but I forget how much I used in these particular works.
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