Yes, I'm Propositioning You

It’s been over a week since I last filled this space.  It’s a shame too, because I was averaging an all-time high in page views per day and when I disappeared, that fell off a cliff.

Where have I been?

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you have some clue about how I’ve been filling my days without filling these screens with funny little characters that string together to form funny little words that mean something to us. If you don’t follow me on either of those forms of social media, the briefest synopsis I can offer you is this: Work called.  I answered.  I’m going to spare you the details of most of it.  Let it suffice to say that the responsibilities of my day job temporarily far exceeded my time allotment for it.  It spilled over into everything else.  Those responsibilities grew like kudzu in the southern heat and I had to grab a machete and spend some time hacking it down.  Okay, so a machete and a flamethrower.  My writing related activities have been almost non-existent for the past week.  My sleeping related activities even suffered drastic cuts.  I can’t help it.  I need my job and the money it provides us to almost-but-not-quite meet basic necessities every month.  But I’m back in the writer’s saddle again.

One of the activities that forced me to unplug from the matrix for a bit was a camping trip.  Yes, the outdoor kind.  With tents.  And fire.  Ooooh, pretty colors.  Wait, what?  Sorry.  So, I went camping.  In a tent.   On the beach.  On the hottest day of the year so far in coastal North Carolina.  Believe me, it was definitely not by choice.  It was a work thing.  It was organized as a stress release by and for my colleagues and I.  It wasn’t bad.  Compared to taking a knife in the eyeball.  It was hot.  There were lots of small biting insects that seemed to know how to squeeze through the netting on my tent.  There were a lot of people drinking tremendous quantities of alcoholic beverages (THIS is phenomenal with juice).  Did I mention that it was hot?

The whole trip did remind me that my wife and I used to go camping.  When we were younger, we’d load the tent into our van and drive to the mountains of North or South Carolina and spend a night or three.  Now, we’ve been thinking that we should do that again.  Except, our giant two room plus screened porch extremely expensive cabin tent is mysteriously missing its poles.  And an air conditioning unit.  Seriously, I can’t figure out what happened to those poles.  I had to borrow a tent for the trip.

When I returned to the real world and plugged back into the matrix, I was reminded by a friend on Twitter that I had missed the release of some phone that came out last week.

For those of you who are regular readers, if any of you are left, you remember that I wrote some flash fiction for a couple of contests over the last few weeks.  I’ve decided that I’m going to be posting more fiction in the near future.  I am going to have to decide first what is the most appropriate venue for said fiction, but I will be sharing more of my writing with you as soon as I figure it out.

Here are my three options:

1. Continue posting fiction here.  This allows it to be seen by a larger number of people who visit here, but tends to crowd out the other content (news about that will be later in this post).
2. Start a fiction blog.  This option allows me to get a clean start for a blog, but will require setup and design work, as well as the marketing work to get people to go there and read.  I’m not sure I have the time for that effort.
3. Start an online fiction magazine/community/blog beast.  This is my favorite option.  If I could find a few other aspiring writers who want to share writing duties on a fiction blog/online magazine, it would be a great opportunity (I think) to get short fiction out on the web for people to read and critique.  It might also give some other new writers a chance to get some exposure and confidence.  I wouldn’t mind designing a wordpress (NOT Blogger) site to host this.  I just don’t have the money for the hosting or domain name right now.  The basic premise would be that a group of writers, myself included, would each retain administrative access to the site and each of us would post one piece of short fiction (typically 1,000 words or less – but if it runs long, hey it would be our site, damn it!) each week (serial works are also acceptable).  We would also invite others to post their original works to the blog (as guest writers), showcasing original talent.  I’m not attached to setting up/maintaining this, so if someone else has a burning desire to do that, it’s fine, but I’d be more than happy to do it, allowing others to just be responsible for their writing.