Posts Tagged Fortnightcaps
Administrata
Posted by DLThurston in Administrative on September 12, 2011
Topic the first: Fortnightcaps.
I’ve enjoyed doing the Fortnightcaps for the last few months, and I still intend to continue them through the end of the year. However, after much deliberation, I’ve decided that the project will not continue into 2012. This decision comes for a variety of reasons. First, the project was intended to get my brain working on a twice a week basis, coming up with a story idea and bringing it to quick completion. I still contend this is a great exercise for writers, but it’s an exercise that I’m now doing twice most weeks thanks to Five Minute Fiction and Hump Day Challenge.
That’s a reason, but it’s not really the reason. Since I already did some pulling back of the curtain on Friday when showing my pageview stats, I’m going to talk a little more about my site views. Fortnightcaps by far account for the worst traffic that I get on this blog. According to my bitly stats, the last five links that I put up for Fortnightcap stories got 0, 0, 1, 1, and 1 hits. Now, this website isn’t primarily a vehicle for generating hits, or else I’d be doing all the stupid SEO stuff that my spam comments are always talking about. But when we’re talking about any kind of creative output, there’s the necessity to keep in mind the viewing audience. Anything story I put on this blog has its first publication rights used up, making it harder to potentially turn around and put out to anthologies, magazines, or any other publication venue. If I’m burning the rights on stories and then having no one actually read them, then I ultimately feel like I’m doing a long term disservice to myself.
So while this blog isn’t primarily a hit generating site, I still have to keep hits in mind when I do something like burn story rights on here. I’ll probably keep a similar project going on in 2012, just not on the blog. I’d like to thank anyone who has read and enjoyed the Fortnightcaps thus far, and hope you will enjoy the few months left in the project.
Topic the second: #flashathon
I like to mention this occasionally to keep it in people’s minds, and will probably do it more and more as the date arrives. I’ve not talked about it in awhile because I haven’t really had news to share. I am starting to put feelers out to bring in “guest inspiration” from other writers and blogs. We’re getting closer and closer to the date, as you can see in the countdown on the right hand side of this blog. 1 month, 10 days as of this morning.
For those who might be new, or haven’t seen me talk about it before, the #flashathon is going to be a flash fiction marathon hosted on this blog October 22nd. It will consist of 12 hourly posts, each of which will provide some sort of optional story inspiration (probably in the form of a word or phrase). Participants in the #flashathon are then encouraged to write a flash fiction piece either using that inspiration or inspiration of their own. The goal is 12 stories in 12 hours. Or however many hours you can/want to participate in.
More details can be found in the Flashathon tab at the top of every page.
Fortnightcap: Last Christmas
Posted by DLThurston in Fortnightcaps on May 19, 2011
Last Christmas
A Fortnightcap by DL Thurston
Unusual Christmas Shopping Patterns Reported
December 19, 2012
Economists are forecasting a mixed bag for the retail sector this Christmas. The overall number of consumers is at its lowest level since holiday shopping trends were first tracked, but the amount being spent by those consumers has driven the overall boon to the economy higher than last year’s recession-dampened Christmas. One shopper, loading down his car with three massive 3D televisions and armloads of BluRay movies commented, “what else are you going to do with your money right now? There’s no reason not to be spending every damn cent of it. And anyway, it’s Christmas!”
This matches the general mood that retailers have seen from consumers in the past few weeks, but Christmas cheer is running out as stores are having harder and harder times keeping in-demand customer goods on the shelves. “There’s only so many televisions,” one store manager said, “and that’s it, it’s all we’re going to get. I don’t know what to do when we’re out and won’t be getting any more. Lock the doors? Hopefully people understand.” Shortages are spreading beyond just the retail electronics sector, forcing retail outlets of all stripes to decide on their contingency plans.
For those who are staying out of the commercial realm, there looks to be a unified reasoning. They want to spend time with family, try to focus on the things that are important, especially at a time of year that so many religions find so sacred and that even agnostics and atheists feel a special connection to. “What’s the point of buying more things?” asked Joanne Rhea, a young mother of two who has decided not to even put a tree up this year. “In the end it’s all just stuff, some way for materialistic assholes to keep score right up until the bitter end.” When her children were asked if they would miss having presents to open this year, her older son just started crying.
There has been an increase in charitable giving for the first time in a decade this season, with Toys for Tots bringing in record donations. Major Michelle Prior, spokesperson for the organization, has issued words of thanks for the increase. “It’s great that we’re going to be able to give so many children in need the best Christmas possible.” The bell ringers of the Salvation Army have also been getting increased donations, including no fewer than five instances of checks for over $10,000 being found in the kettles.
Many people are choosing not to spend the holiday at home this year, and are instead traveling. This has meant long lines at the airports, especially as many security personnel have stopped showing up for work. At Dulles, Kevin Lorne was trying to make his way through the line in time for his flight to the Bahamas. “It’s supposed to be paradise, ya know. I always meant to go there. Go see the Bahamas at least once before you die, that’s what I always figure. Just once before you die.” The State Department has reported an uptick of passport applications, though many countries have enacted new, less restrictive travel laws in recent months.
It brings to an end a necessarily unusual year that opened with the news that an extinction-mass asteroid is on an unstoppable collision course for earth, and will end with that asteroid striking during the early hours of December 29th.
Fortnightcaps are biweekly experimentation into short form fiction. All Fortnightcaps are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. So if you like the story, please feel free to link people back here. And if you didn’t, maybe the one in two weeks will be better.
Fortnightcap: Heat Death
Posted by DLThurston in Fortnightcaps on April 19, 2011
Heat Death
A Fortnightcap by DL Thurston
Implications. People never think about implications.
Immortality was one of those things people talked about wanting, talked about needing. Of course, who doesn’t want to live forever? I’ll tell you exactly who: everyone who is living forever. Sure, it seemed like a great idea for a few centuries, but then the ennui kicked in. Eventually there’s only so many time you can do everything you always wanted to do. And in the end there’s only so many people to do things with. After everything else is exhausted, all you can do is wander, and hope to find something new.
We left earth. Let it become what it wanted to be. Let it heal, gave something else their turn. I heard of someone who went back. I guess that was several million years ago now if there still was an earth to go back to. He said cuttlefish had taken over, filled all the spaces that we’d left behind. Good for them, I suppose. In the end, it was like learning that someone had repainted a bedroom in the house sold years ago. Any sentimentality I had for that old place left longer ago than I could really say. Anyway, after the first billion years, time feels rather immaterial anymore.
We wandered. And we waited. There were others out there, those who had made our mistake, and those who hadn’t. At least not yet. I tried to dissuade a few planets, told them what a mistake immortality had been. They just called me unimaginative. I guess there are some mistakes people have to make on their own. Touching a stove hurts. Falling in love leads to heartbreak. Immortality leads to meaninglessness.
The universe continued on. And we waited.
Finally, we congregated again. We were brought together, those humans who hadn’t found a way out, those aliens who had joined us in folly. We were brought together around the last star in a cold and unfeeling infinite. The universe was running out of energy, running out of stuff. All that remained were scattered molecules and this one star, burning hot and bright as it swelled towards a super nova. It was something to do, and then there would finally be nothing.
And we waited. Right up until the end. I remembered a feeling, a sensation I’d left behind so long ago. It was anticipation. It was hopefulness.
The star burst forth with a magnificence that stunned us all, then rapidly contracted into a dead mass. No energy. No heat.
We were so hopeful that the universe would take us with it. That heat death might finally give us release.
Now what?
Fortnightcaps are biweekly experimentation into short form fiction. All Fortnightcaps are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. So if you like the story, please feel free to link people back here. And if you didn’t, maybe the one in two weeks will be better. Picture of Kepler’s Supernova courtesy of NASA, released to public domain.
Pompousercaps?
Posted by DLThurston in Fortnightcaps on January 27, 2011
Future of Fortnightcaps
Posted by DLThurston in Fortnightcaps on July 15, 2011
Yesterday’s Fortnightcap marked #14 in what I’m anticipating to be a series of 27 stories this year. It’s all going far better than I anticipated, so I’m already starting to think what I want to do with them at the end of the year. I’ve always been playing around with the idea of releasing them in some form or another, likely in the form of a digital chapbook through Smashwords so its available on all platforms. I’d probably approach it like a DVD, so there would be:
I’d probably be charging a small amount, either $0.99 or $1.99, but I do feel the need to add something to the collection other than just collecting together 26 stories that I otherwise made available for free and asking people to now pay for them. I’m hoping the ideas above will give people some value for their money.
So here’s where I open it up. Would anyone be at all interested in this? Is there something else you’d want to see to justify dropping even a small amount on this? Leave me a comment, let me know.
Also starting to think about what to do in 2012, whether to keep the project going, scale back, or possibly even accelerate forward into a weekly project. I’ve crashed and burned with weekly stories before, but something about the success of Fortnightcaps has me feeling differently.
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