Call for story submissions!

Announcing the first ever

COMING ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, it's the first-ever anthology of stories by indie writers to bear the INDIE WRITERS MONTHLY stamp of approval*, and we want YOU to be a part of it.

The anthology is going to be a collection of stories about Time Travel, and here is HOW YOU CAN GET IN ON THIS:

A. Have a story about time travel, or write one.

2.  Submit that story to us, by June 15, 2014.  (send submissions to litaplaceforstories[at]gmail.com** and label them "IWM TIME TRAVEL ANNUAL" or something like that.)

THIS IS IMPORTANT: paste the story directly into the of the email.  

I'M NOT OPENING ATTACHMENTS.  

III. Make sure you have the rights to the stories and it'd be nice if it hadn't been published somewhere else.  

Word limits? Who do you think you're talking to, here? Because there'll only be a few weeks to read them, shoot for somewhere between 1 and 1,000 words, but if you go longer, by all means, go longer.

Still reading?  Good.  Here is WHY you want to get in on this!

8(a)2.: The stories we like the best will get put into the anthology and you'll be a published writer! 

and

C: There are prizes! Specifically, the story picked as best by the IWM gang will win a $15 Amazon Gift Card and the Runner Up will get a $10 Amazon Gift Card.

So there you have it!  I look forward to getting those stories.

PSST? Want to read some of my own time-travel stories? Check out 

"the natural order of things is largely determined by what direction we are headed and how fast," or 

HEADLINE: “Time Travel Is Only Possible In One Direction, Scientists Say.” Subhead: “Balderdash,” Tim says.

And here's a link to five 250-word time travel stories (and an essay on another one) 

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*no actual stamp will be created.  It is a metaphor.

**while this is an IWM and not a lit venture I need to keep my regular gmail unclogged up and I assume there will be 100,000s of stories coming in.  

Aliens and Mothering/Parenting

It's Mother's Day today in the U.S. on the planet Earth. In honor of the occasion, I've been using the hand-decorated mug my son made for me (even though the marker ink came off on my hand) and thinking about alien parents. According to the "Your Inner Monkey" episode of the documentary Your Inner Fish (more influence from my son, as he was briefly obsessed with this series), humans are born with brains that are relatively undeveloped compared to monkeys. This is a feature, not a bug, since that means we have an extended childhood that allows our brains to develop over a couple of decades, giving us time to be socialized and educated.That means human children need more intensive nurturing than other animals that mature more quickly. A lot of this nurturing comes from the child's mother, though fathers, other relatives, teachers, and other adults can influence a child as well.

Do you think sentient life forms on other planets require this much nurturing as they develop? If so, do you think it comes from their mother, or whatever the equivalent is? Other life forms may have more than two parents, or may be raised by other members of their race besides their biological parents. No matter what customs apply, I expect natural selection would still favor parents who bond with their offspring--and offspring who form an attachment to their parents would get more support as they mature.

Here's a video featuring one of my favorite alien mothers, the Horta from the original Star Trek series:

You have to feel sorry for a mother who has to care for an entire planet's worth of offspring by herself.

And if I may insert a shameless plug, you can read about a human mother in my SF Catalyst Chronicles series.

"lit, a place for stories" has moved... sort of

Apparently, Google no longer hosts independent URLs, and I am not really interested in paying for a .com name for now on my blog, lit, a place for stories, so the address for THE WEB'S PREMIER STORY SITE THAT WILL PAY YOU FOR YOUR WRITING is now

http://tboe.blogspot.com/

Bookmark it today!

lit, a place for stories

Omnibus Tips & Tricks

Are you an indie writer with a series of books?  Have you ever considered putting them together into an omnibus but aren't sure how?  The key to making a workable omnibus is formatting.  Today on my blog I give you the tips you need to format your omnibus for Amazon's Kindle.  And best of all, it's free of charge!

And even if you don't have an omnibus you can use these formatting tricks to make your ebook not look like crap on Amazon.  That's kind of a good thing.

Vanity Fair may have Monica Lewinsky...

...but we've got P.T. Dilloway, and okay maybe he never made out with a president but I'm pretty sure Monica can't write a superhero story to save her life.

This is all to say that

... INDIE WRITERS MONTHLY ISSUE 3: MAY FLOWERS is on the stands now! Well, no, it's not. It's only available electronically because: trees.  But it's free! From now until May 13 get the latest issue absolutely free, and be treated to a new story from Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, author of the "Twinned Universes" saga, an interview with superhero/sci fi writer P.T. Dilloway, tips on how to get ideas for writing, and stories of how indie writers got started.

It's all available just by clicking RIGHT HERE.

Links

Here are some links for your reading pleasure today:

Hard Science in Science Fiction by Sandra Ulbrich Almazan
Encouragement Does Not Equal Support by Andrew Leon
Operation Omnibus by P.T. Dilloway
I've overcome the insecurity of non-conformity and found myself as a writer. How about you? by Michael Offutt

What I Think About When I Think About Lucy Corin's "100 Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses."

I've been reading 100 Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses, by Lucy Corin, a book that is an actual book.  While I'm usually opposed to actual real books made of paper because this isn't 1853, I make exceptions if it's the only way to read a book that I really want to read.

"Real" books should only be "real" books if there's a reason for them to be in physical form.  The two books I bought as get well presents for myself are both real books (the other one is "S" by JJ Abrams) and both seem to have a reason for being real.

In 100 Apocalypses, for example, Lucy Corin relies on the physical layout of the page to help tell some of the stories.  There are bits in the margins of some stories, a layout that works really well.  (One story tells the main story in the big part of the page but along the margin tells what seems to be an alternate version of the story, a gimmick I liked.)  And the story I got to most recently (I'm about halfway through all the apocalypses) is called "Vision Test Card."

The story starts out with small -- VERY small -- print, just as a vision test would.  It's so small that while I could (just barely) read it on the page, with a lot of work, I ended up cheating (?) and taking a picture of the page with my phone to enlarge the words:

And as I did that, I thought how weird it was that this book, which the author adamantly was determined should remain in physical format for me (again, something I usually dislike: telling me how I have to experience your work rubs me the wrong way, unless it's for a purpose) this book had been converted back into electronic form for me to read it.

The gimmick itself, the small words growing larger, works well in the story and as a reading device, making you work for the story and focusing you on the act of reading as well as the story itself, while also giving you a feel for how the man across the aisle might feel: "he couldn't tell from watching her fingers what she was writing," and we almost can't tell, either.

I call it a gimmick, because it is, but that seems too pejorative. A gimmick is a style device that doesn't work.  When it does, it is more properly termed a device.  So Lucy Corin's devices work in the service of her stories and because of that, the small type, concurrent stories, and even the physical nature of the book itself enhance, rather than detract from, the experience of reading the book.

(Also, it's an excellent book that spec fic lovers should read.  If you want a sample of the stories, McSweeney's ran excerpts weekly and has them up on its site; click this link to go there.  Lucy Corin's writing has influenced mine significantly, as you'll see if you check out any of her stories.)

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Check out my own stories at lit, a place for stories, where I not only publish some of my own work but I will pay you for your writing!  Click here to go to the site.