Galloway’s Hunt
Today I'm releasing a new book called Galloway's Hunt, available now in my Store and on Amazon for $0.99. Plus, read below for some exciting special offers related to the novel I'm working on based on the same title character!
Galloway's Hunt is a novelette set in the world of Galloway's Voyage, my work-in-progress novel.
At approximately 9,100 words, or 35 pages, Galloway's Hunt will take the average reader 30 minutes to complete.
Synopsis
The Yuskian spring bison hunt is a generations-old rite of passage for the people of that country, and big game has always held a certain allure for Lucas Galloway. In the spring of 9970 he sets out to take part in the bison hunt with his good friend Jeremy Prinks, but he soon finds himself swept away on an adventure of literally gigantic proportions.
Purchase Options
You can buy the ebook of Galloway's Hunt for only $0.99, but you also have the option to pay more and receive special bonuses. (Use the dropdown menu at the bottom of this page to select bonuses.)
- For $1.99, I will email you and ask you to provide me with a title that I will use as inspiration for a 50-word story.
- For $4.99, three buyers will be able to name minor characters in the Galloway's Voyage novel.
- The first person who pays $19.99 will be able to provide the name for one of the major characters in the Galloway's Voyage novel.
Head over to the Store to take advantage of these special offers before all the naming rights get snapped up!
Profits from the sale of Galloway's Hunt go towards meeting my Grocery Fund goals.
Volume Two in the Kindle Store, and a Publication
A couple of writing-related updates today. First, if you haven't seen it already, Fifty-Word Stories: Volume Two is now available in the Kindle Store! Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MJG3BO. It's only $2.99, and even if you don't own a Kindle you can still read it on your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android phone, etc., by downloading the great free Kindle app.
In other news, a Twitter-length story of mine called "Brushstrokes" was posted to OneFortyFiction today. You can read it here. Hope you enjoy it! It was a fun one to write, and evolved a lot from the first version into the published one. With such a short length limit, you have to be really sure that every single word is working as hard as it can to get the story across.
I'll have another update tomorrow with some details about the things I've written this week and what I've been doing with them.
My 10 Favourite 50s
I decided to compile a list of 10 of the 50-word stories that I think represent my best work.
When going through all of the stories from Year Two, picking out the best ones for inclusion in Fifty-Word Stories: Volume Two, I kept coming across stories I had forgotten about. I wrote somewhere around 200 stories over the course of the year, so that's to be expected!
Every now and then, one of these stories would surprise me and make me laugh or smile. It's a rare thing to get to read something you wrote as if you were seeing it for the first time, so those experiences made my sojourn through the archives a lot of fun.
Among all of the stories I've written, there is the expected range of quality. Some are good, some aren't so great, and a few, I think, are real gems. I installed the star-rating plugin to help those gems rise to the top of the Popular Stories widget in the sidebar, and the Top Stories page, but with over 700 stories on FiftyWordStories.com today (somewhere around 525 of them written by me), there are definitely some gems that will slip through the cracks. I can't expect every new reader to go digging through the entire archive to find those gems, so I made a list that might help.
Here are the 10 best stories I think I've written for FiftyWordStories.com, in reverse order:
10. Showers and Tellers - February 25, 2011
9. The Apple and the Pear - January 6, 2011
8. Don't Call Me Savior - January 29, 2010
7. Lemon Zest Cookies - February 10, 2011
6. Claim to Fame - October 12, 2009
5. They Taste Like Bitter Grapes - December 4, 2009
4. The Man Who Couldn't Stop Breathing - August 26, 2010
3. Horse-Whale Hoedown - November 12, 2010
2. Lie-Baby - February 8, 2011
1. The Magical Cup and a Terrifying Beast - December 2, 2010
Six of the stories on this list are included in Volume Two, along with 124 others that would probably all make my top 150. Why not order yourself a copy? It's only $12 + shipping, or $3 for the ebook.
Which of these 10 stories is your favourite? Would you build your own list differently? I'd love to hear your Top 3, Top 5, or Top 10. Leave a comment!
“Feel-Good”: Ready for Pre-Release!
I've put together the cover art for Feel-Good, and it's now officially ready for pre-release this Monday!
The photo for the cover was taken by Rudoni Productions. You can see more of his work on his Flickr page.
Image by Rudoni Productions, used under Creative Commons.
In my previous post, I mentioned that the centrepiece story of the collection, which I have now titled Hands-On, had gotten just a little bigger than I'd originally intended. Well, not it's even bigger. The final word count is just under 7,000. It took Larissa about 25 minutes to read the whole thing (and she liked it!). As I explain in the Introduction to the collection, Hands-On feels, to me, more like the opening couple of chapters to a novel than a short story. I've tried to make it as self-contained as possible, but it doesn't seem to want to be self-contained, and who am I to tell it what it can and can't be? Maybe it will eventually turn into something longer; for now, I think it's still worth reading as a standalone.
So: Hands-On is definitely the central feature of the collection, but there's plenty of other good content in there, too, and I think you'll enjoy it all. I'll be emailing early access copies of the collection to the people on the early access list this coming Monday, and creating a page where you can buy the collection as a pay-what-you-want download, as well.
I'll have some more news about any special offers soon, and possibly some details on my future plans for these collections.
The Winner of the Draw
If you pop on over to FiftyWordStories.com, you'll see that @sketchlayerJosh won the draw for the print copy of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One.
Congratulations, Josh! I hope you enjoy the book.
Thank you to everyone who entered by Liking my Facebook page or getting involved on Twitter.
Galloway’s Hunt
Galloway's Hunt is a novelette set in the world of Galloway's Voyage, my work-in-progress novel based on the same title character. Buy it now for only $0.99!
Year of Stories
Special People
Special People is serialized superhero fiction with a fistful of twists.
Special people have special problems.
