A drabble...

...Wikipedia tells us, is a short work of fiction of precisely 100 words in length. I've never written one, never attempted one even. Until now. Here it is, raw and unedited.

"Do you remember our first date?" she says.
"Of course," he says. "You were late."
"You were late. Remember that waiter?"
"At the Thai place."
"At the pizza place."
"And when you spilt the wine…"
"You knocked my glass over!"
"It’s funny what we remember, isn’t it?"
"I suppose. It’s nothing to laugh about though."
"Isn’t it?"
She doesn’t answer.
"Do you think… do you think I should write that down? About the wine, I mean."
"You have done already. You could do again, if you like."
She passes him the notebook.
"Do you remember our first date?" he says.

I'll try to get on with some longer writing now. You know, like that novella I just don't seem to ever finish...

A year on...

It's coming up for a year since The Petrified World and other tales was published. I was tremendously proud to edit it, and prouder still to feature some excellent writers that I very much admire. What's more, since all profits went to charity, it has been able to raise some funds for a very deserving cause, Population Matters.

I guess my message here is two-fold - if you bought the book, would you consider heading back to Amazon and leaving a review for it? Reviews really help in our algorithm-led world of online shopping, and so far The Petrified World... has one five-star review and nothing else. So you can help the cause again, with a nice review, and it won't even cost you anything this time...

And of course, if you haven't bought the book already, what are you waiting for? Or maybe, in the run up to Christmas, you need some affordable gifts for the readers in your life...? So here's the all-important link:

bit.ly/petrifiedworld

Minding the gaps

I unearthed an old writing notebook recently. Most of what's inside has either been used already or doesn't deserve to be used, but there are one or two scraps that might be retooled, retold. Here's one such fragment, the start of something, maybe, reproduced here exactly as written, warts 'n' all and very unedited. What do you think?

Daniel Button was obsessed with money, his every waking moment devoted to its pursuit, yet somehow he remained of average means at best. When he invested in shares, the market crashed. When he gambled on a horse, it would fall at the last. Despite years of Premium Bond ownership, Daniel had never won more than £25. And although he'd played the Lottery even week since its launch, he'd never won more than the occasional tenner.
     It didn't stop him though. The Lottery was his grail. He played every new game that launched, spending an increasing amount of money on tickets. Then scratchcards. Every week, every game, Daniel played. And he never won more than a tenth of his outlay.
     When the New Year's Day Millionaire Maker scratchcard was announced, Daniel had a plan, and a budget. Buy ten tickets from each of ten different shops. Surely, finally, wealth beckoned?
     As he queued in the tenth shop, worrying with his last £10 note, he told himself that this was the one - a life that didn't involve standing in line behind malodorous pensioners in mouse-brown overcoats was only moments away.
     And then the malodorous pensioner in the mouse-brown overcoat bought a single Lottery scratchcard, and won a million pounds, right there in front of Daniel's disbelieving eyes.
     Button went to bed believing God was against him.
     Yet when he awoke, he had cause to reconsider, for it seemed to be New Year's Day again, and only he had noticed. At first he thought the DJ had made a mistake but when he turned on the TV and found yesterday's headlines were still breaking news, Daniel could only conclude that somehow he'd been given a second chance. Everything was the same - yet now, one thing could be different.
     Daniel set off at the same time, and visited the same shops, in the same order. His first nine visits yielded exactly the same results as they had yesterday. Or was it today? Daniel wasn't sure, and had stopped trying to figure out his second chance. As he made his way towards the tenth shop, final tenner in hand, Button quickened his pace, determined to be one place further forward in the queue.
     With 100 yards to go, Daniel spotted his opponent waiting patiently for traffic lights to change so that

And that's as far as I got. I suspect this was written for a hot-pen exercise, a ten minute warm-up. Certainly it doesn't feel like something I laboured over. And certainly it is conceptually indebted to Groundhog Day. But it's not terrible, I think.

I also don't know where I was going with this. What would happen to the pensioner in the mouse-brown overcoat? What twist in the tail was brewing? I can't remember. Dated pieces around this snippet suggest it was written in mid-2011, so it's been languishing for eight years. Unless I can think of the outcome, I guess it will carry on languishing...

Always nice to get a review

It's (nearly) always nice to get a review, in my experience, so whilst I promise I won't do this every time The Petrified World and other tales gets a write-up, I am going to reproduce this one, the first review to appear on Amazon for the various-authors charity anthology I put together and edited. Here it is:

★★★★★
I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of short stories. Whilst they loosely share a general theme of things unknown or unspoken there is great variety in the settings and approach, which really adds to the interest and had me looking forward to each new experience unfolding in the pages. Every one of the stories deals with something unsettling, something dark, with some rooted in contemporary reality, while others explore futuristic scenarios, many of them posing more questions than they deliver answers. All are thought-provoking for different reasons. A great book to pick up and put down at one's leisure – none of the stories are more than 12 pages long - and one which will have me looking out for more work by all the talented authors within it. Plus it’s for a good cause – and one which seems fitting to the book. Very happy to recommend this.

That's nice, isn't it?

You can read the review in situ here or, you know, just just buy the book straight off. What can I say, it's affordable, offers you eleven great short stories by new and emerging authors and benefits the Population Matters charity too - what's not to like?

Have a sneak preview

I might have mentioned, I'm quietly pleased with this book. Here's a little preview, to convince you of the need to buy it... As ever, with Amazon embeds, the formatting isn't perfect, but rest assured it is in the actual book. No go, buy, read, review, all that good stuff...

Post-launch analysis

Remembering that time when The Petrified World and other tales paperback edition was ranked 9,449 on Amazon, out of more than six million books...

You can read more about this book here or cut to the chase and just buy it.

The Petrified World and other tales

Well, it's taken me most of the year to get it together but finally, here it is. The Petrified World and other tales is a collection of short stories by new and emerging writers that I have been very proud to collate. Profits from the sale of the book will be donated to the charity Population Matters, and I'm quietly proud of that too.

This collection of eleven short stories takes the idea of taboos, of hidden subjects, of unspoken truths, as its loose theme. Some of the stories address potential problems for a near-future Earth, some do not, but all are linked by the idea of what is not being talked about, whether that's between families, colleagues, in the news or on a wider scale. Here's a list of the stories, with links to author websites for those that have them:

The Petrified World - Mark Kilner
Pig Hunting - Ian Nettleton
The Transistor - Andrea Holland
We Need You To Show Us What Happy Looks Like - Katy Carr
The Swimming Pool - Sandy Greenard
On The Air - Rol Hirst
Retrograde Amnesia - Simon Poore
About The Dog - Sarah Dobbs
The Crossing - Martin Pond
At Malham Cove - Ada Carter
Compensating For Einstein - Arnold Pettibone

The ebook version is available right here, as is the paperback edition. Prices are £1.99 and £3.99 respectively... so it makes a great stocking-filler.

If you want to get on board and help promote the book (it's for a good cause, after all), please use the cover image above left and these URLs: bit.ly/petrifiedworld for the ebook and bit.ly/petrifiedbk for the paperback - thanks.

Go on now, shop, and don't forget to read about Population Matters ... ta.

Post mortem

You might remember how, back in May, I wrote about the 100 days of writing initiative? And how I hoped it might spur me on a bit? Well the 100 days finished a couple of weeks ago, so I should probably admit to how well (or otherwise) I got on with it.

My primary intention was to complete Nudge, the novella I first posted about two and a half years ago. And I certainly moved things on a good deal. Writing every day helped regain the momentum I had lost with it, until I had a real head of steam built up. But then... then came a particularly tricky, transitional passage that I struggled with. Struggled and struggled... and am still struggling. And since I am very much a linear author - I write it in pretty much the order you read it - I'm stuck on this story for now. Still hoping I can unstick myself at some point before the year is out, but hey.

Whilst stuck, other projects started. I wrote a completely new short story called The Crossing - more about that before the year is out too, I hope. That was fun to write, not least because it's almost in the second person. Intrigued? You'll see what I mean when you read it. And I've been doing some light-touch editing too, for a project that will also hopefully see the light of day before the year is out. Fingers crossed.

And finally, I've been considering new cover designs for the second edition of Drawn to the Deep End, for potential release to mark the first anniversary of its publication. Watch this space.

Now, to unstick!

Song Books - a recommendation

I have nothing new to post about my own writing, but I am very happy to recommend having a listen to this: my good friend and supremely talented writer, Deborah Arnander, talking about short stories on the radio. With bonus Velvet Underground and Nico content! Here you go:

Something new

Whilst I let the first edit of the novel-length work "rest" for a while, I've started something new. A short story, no less (and certainly no more). At present, it begins thus:

I've never lost a coin toss. I know how that sounds. But if I'm going to record this at all, I'd better be completely honest from the outset, and qualify that: I've never lost a coin toss by chance.
     There was that one time you see. I was captain of the school second eleven football team. Nine games into the season we were unbeaten, and I'd naturally won all nine coin tosses. Before our tenth match Mr Smith, the reluctant geography teacher whose sole purpose as our coach was to ferry us around the county in the lesser of the school's two minibuses, concluded his usual pre-match pep talk ("Go and win boys!") with a question: did I know what the odds were of winning nine coin tosses in a row? His Irish accent softened the question, and his mouth was smiling, but his eyes weren't.
     "No sir," I replied.
     "One in five hundred and twelve," he said. "Long odds, that."
     I don't think I said much in return, possibly I tried to laugh about it as I ran on to the pitch to catch up with my team-mates. And of course I lost that day's toss, just - it was surprisingly hard to remember, counter-intuitive even, to nudge heads but call tails. As I trudged back out of the centre circle, I risked a glance at Mr Smith - he was staring directly at me, and no part of his face was smiling.

I'm three and a half thousand words in now, and the story has bitten me. It has traction, I think (hope). What do you think?

A story within a story within a story...

This blog is about writing - mostly, but not exclusively, mine. This post falls squarely into the "not mine" category.

I watched The Fisher King for the umpteenth time recently. It's a terrific film, in my view, beautifully shot and with a wonderful story at its heart. In the course of the film we discover that Perry (Robin Williams) was once a college professor with a particular interest or specialism in the fisher king fable of Arthurian legend (the story within a story). Later, in a rare moment of calm lucidity, Perry tells Jack (Jeff Bridges) another version of that fable (the story within a story within a story)... and it's lovely. At the risk of being sentimental, let me reproduce it for you here:

It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king. Now while he is spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the holy grail, symbol of God's divine grace. And a voice said to the boy, "You shall be keeper of the grail so that it may heal the hearts of men." But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty. And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God, so he reached into the fire to take the grail, and the grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded. Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper. Until one day, life for him lost its reason. He had no faith in any man, not even himself. He couldn't love or feel loved. He was sick with experience. He began to die. One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded, he didn't see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king, "What ails you friend?" The king replied, "I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat". So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king. As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the holy grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, "How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?" And the fool replied, "I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."

So what am I saying here, really? Firstly, The Fisher King is brilliant, go and watch it. Secondly, I'm going soft in my old age. And thirdly (mostly), I am envious of the ability to write such an entirely satisfying short story in a single paragraph.

Don't worry, normal service (the macabre, twist endings and tales of the unexpected) will be resumed shortly.

A short story for you... just not one of mine (yet)

In the run up to Christmas, The Guardian's Weekend magazine Saturday supplement included four Christmas ghost stories. Whilst they were all good, Jeanette Winterson's Dark Christmas deserves a special mention. Pick of the bunch though, for me, was Light and Space by Ned Beauman, a terrific piece of psychological horror that inevitably prompted the "I wish I'd written that" feeling in me that I think most aspiring writers feel on a semi-regular basis. Bottom line? Light and Space is the best short story I read in 2013.

You can find all four stories online here.The website also has a bonus fifth story, from Penelope Lively.

What do you call a non-fiction short story?

Because to me, "story" implies fiction. But calling it an "essay" seems too formal, too academic.

I only ask because I thought I should probably do something with my one-time attempt to be Dave Gorman, the non-fiction short story (or essay if you'd prefer) about what happened when I tried to live for a month without using any supermarkets chains.

Yes, Tesc-No - Living without supermarkets is now available for your Kindling pleasure, and joins the growing number of non-fiction titles in my back-catalogue. And when I say "joins", I mean "doubles".

I may have appropriated a logo there...

Narrative. Maybe a non-fiction short story is just a narrative.

Don't get any big ideas - they're not going to happen

Regular readers might know that I recently hatched a scheme (for which, read desperate attempt) to crack the Amazon.com Top 100 Free list with one or both of the titles I currently offer under KDP Select. The theory goes that if you can crack that Top 100 list, even if only for a short while, a significant sales "bump" follows.

So I notified every "list your KDP Select promotion here" website I could find (and I found plenty). I blogged my plan wherever I could. I tried to build some Twitter momentum. I called in favours. Hell, I even posted to Facebook, something I am usually loath to do.

But I didn't spend any money.

A couple of Kindle author forums seemed to both suggest placing ad's with BookBub as a sure-fire way of cracking the list... but those ad's start at $70, and I had a promotional budget of precisely zero.

So, the promotion ran last weekend. What happened, I hear you ask?

Turn Around Where Possible got to #748 briefly on Saturday. Cold didn't even crack the top 2,000.

Aside from new levels of circumspection, what have I learnt from this? Firstly, that unless some of the big boys (ENT, Pixel Of Ink, and so on) actually run your promotion, it doesn't matter how many free "list your KDP Select promotion here" websites you notify. Most of the rest are small-fry, by comparison. Secondly, if you're running a two-day promotion you need to achieve in excess of 2,000 downloads to get close to the fabled Top 100 list. I managed a shade under 400 in the US.

There were some positives. I logged my first downloads in India which is great, as Amazon.in is surely a massive potential marketplace. I made the US Top 10 Free Short Stories list (indeed, I sat at #9 on that for much of the weekend). Oh, and Turn Around got as high as #652 on the Canadian Free list on the strength of just nine downloads. Yes, nine. The rewards from cracking their Top 100 might be a lot smaller, but equally making their chart without spending any money might actually be achievable.

Before I close, can I just quickly take this opportunity to publicly thank all friends and acquaintances you helped, retweeted, liked, posted, forwarded and, ultimately, downloaded? Thank you all. And if anybody has $70 to spare, I'll place a BookBub advert next time, save myself going to all this trouble...

Footnote: the title of this post comes from here. But then you knew that already...

The Last Crusade...

... in which I pursue the Holy Grail (geddit?)

Getting onto Amazon.com's Top 100 list is a big deal, I reckon. A lot of Kindle owner's check that on a regular basis. I'm not talking about genre-specific lists, I'm talking about the big guns: Amazon's top 100 paid-for Kindle books and the top 100 free.

It's a big deal because once you're on there, lots of downloads follow and, presumably, book sales of other titles too. That's the theory anyway.

I run two titles under Amazon's exclusivity programme KDP Select, namely Turn Around Where Possible and Cold. Periodically, I give these away free. The nearest either has ever got to the top 100 list was when Turn Around... peaked, for a few short hours, at #113. To get that high, more than 2,200 free copies were downloaded.

What's all this building to? Well, I'm going to have one more crack at the Holy Grail, the top 100. I've scheduled for both titles to be free on Amazon, simultaneously and worldwide, on the 31st of August and 1st of September. I've submitted my promotion's details just about everywhere I can think of. I've given plenty of notice to untold Twitter book promotion accounts. I've scheduled a number of promotional tweets myself on a (hopefully not too annoying) regular basis. And now I'm blogging about it.

So I need your help. If you have a Kindle, Kindle app or Kindle for PC, you can download either or both of these short stories. I hope you do. I think you might like them. But also please tell your friends. Maybe flatter me with a retweet when you see me plugging the big push. And if you run or write for a book review website or blog, please let me know and maybe we can do something.

Think of this as an experiment. Can a little known indie author crack the top 100 free list with a self-published short story or two? Let's find out...

EDIT: I should add that I have no promotional budget for this: zero, zilch, zip, and other words beginning with zed. So to those that have suggested I place an ad with Bookbub (starting price $70), well, it's a nice idea and everything so thank you, but no...)

Free as a bird, apparently

First off, two points* to anyone who identifies the film dialogue from which this post's title is taken.

Secondly, in honour of having a nice long Bank Holiday weekend, I figure you need some short stories to read. So, today and tomorrow, Turn Around Where Possible will be free over at Amazon. Then, on Sunday and Monday, Cold will be free.

Here are some links:

Turn Around Where Possible: Amazon.co.uk • Amazon.com

Cold: Amazon.co.uk • Amazon.com

And as I've said before, don't worry, you don't need a Kindle to read e-books bought from the Amazon Kindle Store.

* Points have no value but hey, you earn my respect.

Coincidentally, it's also International Short Story Day

Today is International Short Story Day, apparently. What better time to launch a new short story then?

Cold is published today, exclusively available through the Amazon Kindle Store (at first, at least). It's a short, dark tale of what happens when a woman breaks her own rules about office relationships and married men. When she realises she can't get her man back she decides to get even instead. So begins her thirst for revenge... and as we all know, revenge is a dish best served cold.

Cold is available right about now, on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk - please do read and enjoy!

So what do you think?

Alongside the never-ending novel-in-waiting, I've been working on a short story lately entitled Cold. It's nearly ready to go, and will be coming to a Kindle near you soon. Maybe other formats and outlets too, I haven't decided yet.

But anyway. Have I mentioned before that I do my own covers? I have a lot of fun with these - whilst it's safe to say I'm no graphic artist or designer, it's amazing what can be achieved with some free software, royalty-free stock images and an understanding of layers.

Here's what I'm thinking of going with for Cold. What do you think?

Draft artwork for Cold

A story in ten words

Ernest Hemingway famously demonstrated that a story could be written in six words with this:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Okay, so you don't learn exactly why the baby shoes were never worn, but you get enough - the story works.

When I heard that last year's Arts Council-funded National Short Story Day (it was December 22nd - shortest day of the year, see?) was running a competition via Twitter to write a short story in ten words, I thought I'd have a go. I gave it a lot of thought actually - like Hemingway's, my ten words needn't tell the full story but they would have to tell enough for the reader to get something out of it... hmm.

On the 22nd, my Twitter timeline was littered with entries with the #StoryIn10Words hashtag. So many, in fact, that when I found out this week that my entry had been chosen as one of the five winners, I was suitably chuffed. Here's my entry:

She pretended to be asleep when he came to bed.

What do you think? I'd love to hear how other people interpret this, why they think she is pretending to be asleep.

Turn Around Where Possible

Hmm. The village is called Grave. Maybe not a good sign?

Last October, I tried to write a Halloween-themed short story. Except, me being me, I disregarded the theme and instead just tried to write a scary story of the "don't go in the woodshed" variety. The rough draft I came up with was entirely silly, but I had a lot of fun writing it. And it turned out okay, I think.

Okay enough that I subsequently spent some time rewriting it. Even though it's not my usual kind of thing - I prefer psychologically unsettling stories to those with axes and blood - it came out well enough, I thought, to submit to One Buck Horror in the hope of actually selling a story to a publication. I know - ground-breaking!

One small snag though. OBH have a 3,000 word limit. Try as I might, I couldn't get the story down below about 3,500, and that was with hacking it to the bone. Since their word limit is completely inflexible (presumably because they pay by the word), that was the end of that little plan.

What to do with the story then? Why, give it away, of course. Because it's not my usual kind of story, I don't see too much point in holding it back for a future collection - I doubt it would fit in too well. Far better to make it freely available, in the vain hope that it helps to draw attention to my other works. Well, it doesn't hurt to dream, does it?

Turn Around Where Possible is available as a PDF right now, for nothing, from Lulu and Smashwords. I recommend the Lulu version - it handles the fonts better. Please do have a read, and maybe let me know what you think. Plus, if you can see a way to cut another 532 words, feel free to suggest how!