Kosmo’s Writing Status

August 4, 2010

- See all 763 of my articles

I’ve been juggling a few balls lately – so what is the status?

I am happy to announce that Tip of the Iceberg and other Stories is complete!  The 99 page PDF will contain copies of every of my fiction stories this year, as well as a 5500+ word story Tip of the IcebergTip of the Iceberg will only appear in this PDF.  The only bad news is that this is one of the rare occasions when we will be charging for content.  However, our most loyal customers will receive a price break.

How long did it take to write Tip of the Iceberg?  About six months, I guess.  I started kicking around ideas for the anchor story for the 4th volume of my fiction around the time volume 3 hit the shelves.  I generated and abandoned quite a few ideas along the way.  While I’m confident that I settled on the right story for this volume, it’s conceivable that some of the other ideas will become the capstone stories in future volumes or that scaled down stories will find their way onto the blog.

I also finished the audio version of Tip of the Iceberg.  This is the audio for just the one story – not the entire collection.  The audio runs about 30 minutes and features Kosmo as the reader.

I will be selling this collection in three different ways:

  • The PDF of Tip of the Iceberg and other Stories
  • The MP3 audio version of Tip of the Iceberg
  • A combo version that contains the PDF and the audio, at a reduced price

The official launch date will be on August 12.  As always, I’ll provide a few hundred words as teaser in order to lure you in and fork over a few of your hard earned bucks.  I expect the pricing to be about 15 cents per story.  So I’m trying not to nickel and dime you too much.  Oh, wait – 15 cents is a nickel and a dime.  So I guess I AM trying to nickel and dime you.

I’ve also been working on Mountains, Meadows, and Chasms, my entry for the Iowa Short Fiction Award.  The mountains, meadows, and chasms are not literal but rather metaphors for life – the good times, the bad times, and the everyday experiences.  Entries for the contest must be 150 pages, and I had no trouble collecting enough of my work to hit that page count.  After removing some stories that I wasn’t particularly proud of, the page count stands at 236.  This could fluctuate slightly, but at this point, I’m pretty much set on those stories being included.

During the next few months, I plan to scale down to six articles a week in The Soap Boxers.  This should allow me to focus a bit more attention on my novel, but unfortunately has been languishing lately.  I’d love to get more written in the novel, but I simply haven’t had time in recent months.  Hopefully skipping an article every week will free up at least a bit of time.

Leave a Reply