Hey, there! If you’re here, you’re either following links from my facebook feed, from twitter, or perhaps even from Books Go Social – so thanks for doing that!
This site is where my first book ‘Vengeful Hank & Other Shortweird Stories’ was dreamt up. For several years, I’d been looking for a way to goose myself into writing more for myself, for the enjoyment of it, as well as just experimenting with blogging.
So on January 1st, 2013, I gave myself a challenge.
Every day, for one year, I had to blog something. Initially, I repurposed some old poems and snippets of idiocy. It started as nothing more than a once-a-day writing exercise, where I’d assign myself a number of words to write every day (based on which day of the year it was) so that by the end of that year, I’d have written 365 creative writing things.
After a year of writing, on Dec 31st, I was the best kind of exhausted as I hit ‘publish’ on my last story of the year, entitled, aptly enough, “The Last One”. I shared it on Facebook, and then I didn’t publish for weeks. And an interesting thing happened.
I got lots of messages, on twitter and facebook from followers who’d been reading along with me. From time to time they’d chimed in, piped up, given me feedback, and liked the posts. But now? Now they wanted to know: why aren’t you posting more stories?
To my surprise, the stories had become part of people’s everyday routine, as much as they’d become part of mine. And I guess it’s around that time the faintest glimmer of an idea hit me… Could these ‘shortweird stories’ actually be a book?
There’s a long story after that. But the short version is: yes. Yes, they could. I pulled the best stories out. I edited them. And I managed to find a publisher! An indie publisher, but a publisher! But that’s another story for another post.
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70-word blog, or “Waking moments” Monday, March 11, 2013
Darkness faded to dim light as Michael’s sleep-encrusted eyes slowly cracked open. Consciousnesses trickled into his mind, like the drip of a percolator, except what flowed into the cup of his brain was not coffee but the sound of quiet, blubbering sobs.
For Michael could hear the thoughts of pickles.
And at the bottom of a jar in the fridge – a lonely and inconsolable gherkin remembered his friends and waited.
Thanks for reading this far. As you see… the story is short. And weird. As superstar comedian, actor, improvisor and author Colin Mochrie said of Vengeful Hank & Other Shortweird Stories
“… never has a book title so accurately described what
is between the covers…”
Hope I’ll see you here again next Monday. But first… let me tell you about:
THE SHORTWEIRD STORIES LIMERICK OFFER
If you order a paperback copy of the book from Amazon, simply post a picture of you with my book on the Shortweird Stories Facebook fan page, I’ll write you a custom limerick and tag you! Post a picture of yourself with the ebook, and you get a haiku! Available in kindle or paperback on Amazon: http://tiny.cc/vengfulhank Here’s what some fans and followers already posted… check Facebook to see their limericks (and in some cases, haikus!)
