We Are Now

We Are Now is a a month-long celebration of flash fiction. Check it out!

 We Are Now has launched. A story a day, every weekday through National Novel Writing Month. My contribution is a serial novella called Helping Henry. Today's chapter, the first, is called Dinosaurs. Neil Vogler contributes a neat little bit of the old vino, and P.T. Dilloway pushes at the edges of reality and consciousness.

On November the sixteenth, I'll be reading from Helping Henry at Diesel Books in Oakland. Here are the details. And it will be possible to pre-order the e-book of We Are Now from Diesel, that night.

So.

I can read at a bookstore, and the bookstore profits. Huh. Well, I did not know.

That's my name there, all right.

Oh, my.

I have a confession to make. I've been freaking out, and having mixed success in my attempts at avoiding self-sabotage.

That's because these stories weren't written for me. Most of my work has been done for personal reasons, and whether or not anyone else liked them was beside the point.

These were written to be read. These were written to entertain.

It matters to me whether or not people read and like these. I'm secure enough so I don't need the world to love them, but I'll be unhappy unless a few people I don't know take a shine to these.

It's a lot easier to think, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke," than it is to write a joke that makes them laugh, if you're a person of a certain nature.

So I'm actually vulnerable here. That's a new position for me, creatively.

The thing that gets me, is that I'll find out nothing today, nothing tomorrow. It won't be until after all this is done that I find out what it actually means, and until then, I live in world of fog and cobwebs.

Does this mean I'm a real writer now?