Our Father, The Music Teacher

I haven't written or published much flash fiction for awhile. In fact, it's been over a year. Obviously my attention has been elsewhere. This isn't to say that I won't get the flash fiction bug again one day, but right now my workload seems to be novel- and novella-length works. Because, you know, I have bills to pay.

Anyway, the point of all this is I'm excited to tell you I have a new flash piece over at Matter Press. It's called "Our Father, the Music Teacher." I hope you enjoy it.

I wanted to include some audio here of me reading the story, but quite honestly I just don't have the extra time. If you've noticed, I haven't really been keeping this blog going as regularly as I used to. For a few weeks I was reading chapters from The Inner Circle and posting them every Friday, with the idea of posting a new chapter until the novel's release. But then I missed a week, and when nobody said anything, I got curious and let another week go by and then another week. As much as I enjoyed reading the chapters, time has become more important than ever to me right now, so I figured if nobody was listening to them, I wasn't going to waste my time. (Believe it or not, despite the short length of the chapters, it can take between a half hour and an hour to read it, edit it, get it uploaded, etc.)

Anyway, hopefully one of these days I'll be able to keep up with the blog. Until then, read the story, why don't you?

An E-Pricing Revelation

For the longest time I dismissed the idea that, if you're e-publishing a short story, you should price it as much as a cup of Starbucks coffee. After all, it takes maybe ten, fifteen minutes to finish that cup of coffee. It might take just as long to read your story, if not longer, so why not price your short stories the same? Again, for the longest time I dismissed the idea, but I've been thinking a lot about it and you know what? It's a great idea! In fact, it gave me a whole new perspective on how to price my next novel.

The Inner Circle will be my longest novel yet, over 120,000 words, or over 400 pages. That's a long novel, and should take readers hours to read. In fact, if they read straight through, they might be able to finish the novel in ... what, six, seven, eight hours? I guess it all depends on reading speed. Still, if we can compare short story prices to coffee prices, I figure we can compare novel prices to ... how about airline prices?

Yes, I just checked Virgin America flights from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. That's about six hours, if not less, with no layover. And the price? Well, it depends on the time of day, but let's go with $300 one-way.

So, with that in mind, the price of The Inner Circle when it's release will be $299.

If you think about it, that's a bargain!

RIP Donald J. Sobol

Via the New York Times:

Donald J. Sobol, the creator of Encyclopedia Brown, the clever boy detective who made bookworms of many a reluctant young reader, died on Wednesday in South Miami. He was 87.

I forget what grade it was in elementary school, but one day I was introduced to Encyclopedia Brown and my life changed forever. I mean, what kid wouldn't want to be Encyclopedia Brown, who often helped his police chief dad solve crimes, and who ran his own detective agency out of his garage? The books, from what I remember, were always surprising and challenging. I wonder if I read one of them today, if I would be as stumped on the mysteries as I was when I was a kid. I'm thinking probably yeah.

P.S. Actually, now that I think about it, the book in elementary school was the You Be The Jury series by Marvin Miller. I remember, having watched a then recent episode of MacGyver where he was in jury duty, taking my own notebook and pen into the classroom to jot down notes. But still, You Be The Jury did the same kind of thing that Encyclopedia Brown did -- it got kids to read and challenged them to think outside the box. And for that, we should be thankful.

In Which Ravi Mangla And I Talk Shop

Ravi Mangla is one of my favorite flash fiction writers. His work is usually very offbeat and weird and fresh that I have no problem comparing him to the likes of Ben Loory and Etgar Keret. His collection of microfiction, Visiting Writers, came out this past year from Uncanny Valley Press. He wrote one of my all-time favorite flash pieces (which he reads in the podcast), and has also helped out with the Wigleaf Top 50. We talk about all these things and more -- like Michael Cunningham's take on The Pale King. Really, is this line the greatest thing ever written?

Past the flannel plains and the blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscatine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek.

Near the end of the podcast there's a cut and we start talking about TV shows. So give it a listen. And also keep an eye out for Ravi's Blurb coming soon from Artistically Declined Press.

In Which Ravi Mangla And I Talk Shop