I'm Getting Ready to Do Something I Probably Shouldn't

The other day, I went to a website I hadn't visited in a very long time. After browsing through it for a few minutes, I came to a decision. How momentous a decision, in the grand scheme of things, I don't know -- probably not very -- but for me, right now, it's sort of a big deal.

This is the website in question. I've been aware of Nedroid for a while, and I've always found him very funny, and an immensely talented artist. I mean, look at some of that stuff. Even the pictures that look like doodles are, I think, pretty great, and when you look at his more detailed work it's hard to not think he should be getting paid for this. And he's just throwing it up there for free. Maybe he has all sorts of deals with book companies or paying websites that I don't know about, and by all rights he should, but I don't think so.

So, I'm about to follow suit. I can't draw, so don't worry about that, but I do write stories. I'd rather not get into my personal writing history, such as it is, right now, but it's something I've done off and on (mostly, sad to say, off for the last several years) since I was a kid. And recently, for the first time in a long time, I actually finished something. Broadly speaking, it's a horror story (that's how I think of it anyway, although some may quibble with that designation), and the market for that kind of fiction is pretty abysmal these days. That might sound like an excuse to you, and maybe it is, but it's also true. There are no good magazines for it that I'm aware of, and even my decision to embrace New Technology and submit it to an on-line magazine that actually pays hit a roadblock when I discovered that my story is too long. The magazine has a maximum word count for the stories they publish -- as do all such magazines, on-line or otherwise -- and my story exceeds it.

Which leaves me where? With possibly more options than I'm either willing to admit or prepared to look into, but looking at Nedroid's site the other day has inspired me to take the step of putting my story up here, for free, for everyone to read and comment on. What I ultimately hope to gain from this, I don't really know, but I feel like simply putting it out there is a big enough step for my lazy ass that it's worth taking.

To be honest, the idea has been in my head for a few months, and one of the big reasons I haven't gone through with it is because my story doesn't have a title. I think titles are important, and I love a good title, but apparently -- lately, anyway -- I'm absolutely terrible at coming up with them. I do hope to be able to finally find the right one for my story before I actually put it up, but if I can't, then this thing'll just go up as "Untitled". I hope that doesn't happen, but the reason I'm putting up this post now, at least a few days before I put up the story, is to basically force myself across the line, the point of no return. I'm on record now, so...

A couple more things: the story isn't that long -- in manuscript form, it's a little over 20 pages, which I'd call average for a short story -- but it's long enough that I'm going to break this up into parts. I don't know how many posts this will take up, and I won't until I start actually breaking it down, but the point is that this will be a kind of series. Or serial, if you will. Also, if the story were to get an MPAA rating, it would be rated R, for Violent Killing, Suggestive Times, and Swear Talking. So if that's not your kind of thing, this counts as your warning.

Okay, well, that's it. I'm on record. Look for Part One in a few days, and please don't hesitate to leave comments on the story itself, whatever you think of it.