Tag Archives: web fiction

Writing News and Updates

Losing Freight Update

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My series Losing Freight has been rolling along. We just hit the end of Week 5, and the action is really heating up!

Losing Freight is really unique because there’s a poll at the end of every page where you can vote on choices that affect the story. It’s been a lot of fun to have people voting along!

New pages of the story go up each weekday at 5 PM PST, and polls remain open until noon PST the next day.

If you haven’t been reading, here’s a bit of a recap of what’s happened so far to get you caught up.

Week 1: We’re introduced to Tic Bolter, owner of a one-man shipping business called Bolter Freightage. In his ship, the Galactic Pelican (name chosen by reader poll), he travels from planet to planet delivering various goods and getting himself in trouble. We also meet Lady Libden, a retired opera singer and one of his clients. We learn that Tic has lost something he was supposed to deliver to Libden, an action figure (as chosen by reader poll).

Week 2: Tic brings on a passenger, Milly Leon, to earn a bit of extra money. It turns out she’s looking for a little more than a ride: she may be trailing some trouble in her wake. But she’s also worth a lot of money, so Tic fires up the Origami Engine (named by reader poll) and makes designs on that cash…

Week 3: Tic gives Milly a “Saucy Wench” to drink (named by reader poll), and Milly explains the “quest” she’s on, searching for her parents, two space-time engineers (as chosen by reader poll) who disappeared many years ago.

Week 4: Tic and Milly arrive on Haddock, where Milly wants to look for her parents. Hoping he doesn’t run in to any of the goons who work for Mr. Dunter, the client who sold the action figure Tic lost during delivery, Tic brings Milly to a pawn shop (where a reader poll sent them). Of course there’s trouble!

Week 5: Tic’s friend Haglyn helps Tic and Milly recover from their ordeal, which in Tic’s case involves drinking some Saucy Wenches, but Milly isn’t ready to sit back and think things over: she heads out to get some good snooping done! She pretends to be one of Mr. Dunter’s secret admirers (a plan voted into action by readers), then runs off once she’s inside Dunter’s building to look for clues. The last thing Tic hears over his PAI (his futuristic smart phone equivalent) is the sound of her getting caught.

What happened to Milly, and what is Tic going to do next? Check in on Monday at 5 PM to get some answers! I hope you read (and vote) along. There’s plenty more excitement to come, and lots more polls to vote in!

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Self-Publishing vs. Trad Publishing

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With all of the different writing I’ve done over roughly the last ten years, I’ve learned a few things about myself. One of those things is that I am pretty much built for web fiction.

There are a few reasons why self-publishing your writing online is really great. First, you have complete control over what you publish, where you put it, and how you promote it. Control is one thing I really love about web fiction. I enjoy tinkering with web design and coding, setting my own schedule for writing and publishing, and even doing marketing and promotion. With traditional publishing, whether it’s for novels or short stories, the only control I can have is what I write and where I send it. For certain projects of mine, that doesn’t feel like enough!

Second, self-publishing requires a little less patience than traditional publishing. Don’t get me wrong; you still have to be patient when you’re publishing your own work. You need to plan out your release dates to give yourself enough time to promote your work, and you have to space things out so you don’t flood readers with too much all at once, and to make yourself a consistent update schedule that you’ll be able to maintain. But with self-publishing, you have control over how patient you have to be. When you’re trying to publish traditionally, you’re subject to the scheduling of whomever you’re submitting to. You may have to wait six months to hear whether a magazine or website wants to publish your story! Sites like Write 1 Sub 1 have strategies to deal with the waiting, but I still have a hard time with all the waiting.

Third, online publishing allows for instant feedback from, and interaction with, readers. As soon as you finish a story and post it, you can start seeing comments, story ratings, and tweets from readers, and if you set up a good stats-tracking system (like Google Analytics) you can see how many people are reading, too. Being able to look at the stats shouldn’t be undervalued, either: maybe 1 in 100 readers will leave a comment, so if all you’re doing is waiting for comments, you’re probably going to be a bit disappointed with the amount of feedback you get, unless you’re getting massive readership.

So in summary, I like self-publishing online because it allows me to have control, I don’t have to be quite so patient, and I’m able to interact with and get feedback from readers. Traditional publishing has its own benefits, of course, but I like these ones! Your mileage may vary.