Month: June 2013

Flash Fiction Challenge: Goodbye Cable Guy

Photo by K.S. Brooks

Gus was an old dog and very good with people. Most of the time, he completely ignored them.

It was surprising to see how he went after the cable guy. It was so out of character, and I couldn’t stop him.

The poor cable guy yelled and screamed and Gus lunged and attacked him over and over, til the man fell backwards out of the bedroom window. Even then, I wondered if Gus was going to jump out right after him.

Then I looked down at the body splayed out on the walk six stories below and I understood. That was no cable guy, and it was just beginning…

In 250 words or less, tell us a story incorporating the elements in the picture. The 250 word limit will be strictly enforced.

Please keep language and subject matter to a PG-13 level.

Use the comment section below to submit your entry. Entries will be accepted until Tuesday at 5:00 PM Pacific Time. Continue reading “Flash Fiction Challenge: Goodbye Cable Guy”

Renee Pierce-Williams: This Week’s Flash Fiction Star

This week, Renee Pierce-Williams’ entry was chosen by readers as the favorite in the Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. Congrats, Renee!

The winning entry is rewarded with a special feature here today and a place in our collection of winners which will be published as an e-book at year end.

Without further ado, here’s the winning entry:

Continue reading “Renee Pierce-Williams: This Week’s Flash Fiction Star”

Tell Me a Story

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it seems like every fifth indie author I meet is writing some kind of genre fiction – sci-fi, fantasy, thrillers, romance….

Oh, wait. Apparently I’m not that far off the mark. The Guardian ran a story this week about how indie books accounted for more than twenty percent of the genre e-books sold in the UK last year. The stats come from Bowker Market Research, which ought to know a thing or two about book sales and distribution.

Bowker says trad-pubbed books still dominate when dead-tree volumes are included – just two percent of all books sold in the UK last year were published by indies. But when only e-book sales are tallied, the percentage of indie books pops up fast. And when you look at only genre fiction, we indies own a healthy slice of the marketplace. Continue reading “Tell Me a Story”

Bookmasters

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Despite all the efforts to make authors aware of predators looking to make money off of them, the best tool is actually knowing how to spot a scam. That knowledge will enable authors, no matter how often the scammer changes its name, to avoid being taken advantage of. In March 2015, we we ran a month-long series called #PublishingFoul to teach authors how to avoid scams, and to help them to get out of situations with bad publishers.

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