For some time now, I’ve been enjoying many of the fine webcomic sites. These are serial fiction, where a comic is posted on a regular (or irregular) basis. One of them in particular, The Airship Flying Cloud, R-505, while similar to a webcomic, is actually serialized text fiction (with a graphic header). This got me thinking about about my own works. As you know, I write and publish science fiction novels, paper and e-book versions. But, sitting at my desk, or killing time with my iPhone, I am writing all the time, and perhaps half of my output is short fiction — science fiction, fantasy, an occasional mystery, and general fiction. Being so focused on publishing my YA Science fiction novels, I haven’t bothered to submit any of these shorter pieces to the magazines in years.
Thus, I have created an alternate ‘blog’, which will have nothing on it but serialized fiction. Here is my design, and rationale: There are many people who read nothing but web pages. While they might enjoy a novel, they never pick one up to read, because it’s not in their habit patterns. Many people read hundreds or thousands of ‘novel-equivalents’, but just in the course of browsing the web. I am publishing, via Henry’s Stories a regular stream of web pages, containing serialized fiction.
To fit this model, I have a target of one to two thousand words. Since most of my short stories run in the 3000-10,000 word range, even these will be split up into daily chunks. However, don’t be surprised at the occasional longer or shorter bit that happens because of the pacing of the story. I will also be hauling out some longer pieces, including some full novels, probably in MWF installments.
It is my hope, that getting these stories out where people can read them will help me get closer to my audience. There are comments at the bottom of each page, and I welcome discussion, flagged typos, and questions. I read them all and try to respond as quickly as I can. It’s also a good place to request more stories about a particular character.
I have placed several stories in the queue already, with a big to-do list to follow. Go take a look at the first one, called Patterns.