UPDATE: FLASH FICTION IS COMING TO THE BLOG

My initial motivation in creating this blog was to promote myself as a writer. I'd read in several places that book-related blogs are one of the best ways for an author to have social outreach to readers as well as other writers. When I contemplated starting one, I'd already written up a few reviews on Goodreads so I had some content to get me going and I'd used Blogger before so there was basically no learning curve in the actual construction of this blog. So I threw up what I had for reviews and made sure to add in a page about my book, Digitarum as well as any other published works I would come out with in the future. I didn't know if I'd like blogging about books whether they were mine or someone else's, but now that the blog has been around for a while, I can definitely say that this is something I enjoy doing very much since it has allowed me to share my thoughts as both a reader and a writer. 

Ever since I got an awesome day job, I've been a little less active with my writing. Partly, this is because I have less free time, but the other part is that I simply don't feel as dire a need to push my writing career forward - it's more like a  hobby I take really seriously now. I am working on something new currently and have been for a while, but it's turned out to be a much larger endeavor than I realized so I'm taking my time with it. But I do want to try and share some of my writing while my main project is in progress and I've been toying with the idea of offering free fiction on the blog for a while, so I've finally decided to bring in some flash fiction! The first couple of stories will be appearing very shortly, but while I'm wrapping them up, I figured it might be best to share some information about flash fiction and why I've decided to make it a part of my blog:

WHAT IS FLASH FICTION?
Flash fiction is a piece of prose that is written in less than 1,000 words. That's not a lot of real estate to work with so these tend to by hyper-focussed pieces of fiction that are often snapshots of a person place or thing at a particular moment in time. They can, of course, be a bit broader, but those tend to be harder to pull off.

WHAT ISN'T FLASH FICTION?
Flash fiction is not narrative poetry. While flash fiction stories certainly do tend to play with narrative techniques, they are always still in the form of prose. 

WHY WRITE FLASH FICTION?
It may seem silly to write stories that are so small. After all, there isn't much space to build a world or develop a character, but they can be fun, snappy little bits of entertainment. Writing this kind of a story is pretty challenging and it is an interesting exercise in looking at the core elements of a story and scaling them down. 

WILL I WANT TO READ THESE STORIES?
Maybe, I guess that depends on you. If you go in with an open mind, flash fiction pieces can be fun. They don't take much time to read so even if you don't like them, you haven't lost all that much. They'll also be posted for people to read freely so they'll cost even less money than they do time.

DOES THIS MEAN THAT THE BLOG WILL BECOME MORE ABOUT POSTING SHORT STORIES?
Absolutely not! The blog's main source of content will definitely still be in the form of reviews and other bookish posts. I'm hoping that the addition of intermittently posted short prose will just offer a little extra spice to things. First and foremost, the blog will always prioritize reviewing books over promoting my personal writing pieces.   

HOW OFTEN WILL THESE FF PIECES BE POSTED?
I have no set schedule for them really. They'll kind of just show up every now and then as I complete them. Each one will also be accompanied by a simple, heavily stylized, piece of artwork which will serve as their "cover." 

WILL THERE BE ANY KIND OF THEME THESE STICK TO?
Yes! They will all have a vaguely Greco-Roman feel to them. They won't depict real people or be historically accurate at all, but they may remind you of movies and such which are set within this era. 

CAN I GIVE FEEDBACK ON THE STORIES THAT GET POSTED?
Feedback in positive, negative, or just thoughtful form is always welcome and appreciated. Reaching out to me on Goodreads or just commenting on the stories themselves are both ways which they can be done. 

WHERE CAN I SEE THEM?
These stories will be content exclusive to the blog. They'll appear as regular posts just like reviews as well as in the new "Free Flash Fiction" tab of the blog.

Hopefully this news is as exciting to others as it is to me. I look forward to sharing little bits of my writing and hope that others find some joy in reading through them.

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