Day: December 9, 2015

Which “Career Change” Flash Fiction Story Gets Your Vote?

Vote5It’s that time again…time to choose your favorite flash fiction story of the week! The judges have whittled down the entries to a select few, and now it’s your turn: time for the public to have the final say. It’s super easy – choose your favorite and cast your vote below for this week’s Flash Fiction champion.

Remember, the winning entries will all be included in the next edition of the IU Flash Fiction Anthology.

Check out this week’s entries here – we’ve even labeled the finalists to make them easier to spot. Make your decision, then use those share buttons at the bottom of the post to spread the word.

Voting polls close Thursday at 5 PM Pacific time.

Which "Career Change" story should be in the anthology?

  • Victoria Ann Carr (83%, 29 Votes)
  • Julia Handel (9%, 3 Votes)
  • Doreen Strom (9%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 35

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NOTE: Entrants whose submissions are not relevant to the prompts and/or exceed the 250 word limit are eliminated from the poll. ONE VOTE PER PERSON, please. Duplicate votes will be deleted. The results displayed above are unofficial until verified by administration.

How Not to Get Publicity for a Book

Author Sock PuppetShortly I’m going to tell a true story about a man who is using a false premise to get publicity. This story is full of generalized and vague statements that will break most rules of telling a good story. When you get there, you’ll understand why. But before I even dive into the story I’m going to take a short tangent. (If I’m gonna break rules, I might as well go all out.) Even worse, that tangent is about politics.

Politics makes up a large share of the public discourse today. As some of my Facebook friends complain, I talk politics more than most. However, when it comes to my reviews, especially fiction, I try to put my personal opinions aside. If a work of fiction has a political ax to grind, it should be judged based on the story, not on whether I agree with its slant. In fact, the second worst backlash I’ve experienced from an author over one of my reviews was a situation where the author felt the real reason for the negative review was political. He was wrong. I agreed with his politics. His story just sucked. As a general rule, I don’t think my book-related sites are an appropriate place to stage or participate in political battles. However, if it is related to books or the business of publishing, I can imagine scenarios where I might make an exception. Which leads me to the story I promised. Continue reading “How Not to Get Publicity for a Book”

BookLikes December Likefest

Booklikes logoBack in February, the amazing Lynne Cantwell introduced us all to BookLikes. BookLikes is sort of a cross between Goodreads and Tumblr – a book review/giveaway/blog site with lots of functionality. So how about we get to know each other on BookLikes better with a like-fest?

Today you can share your blog page and find new friends. Grab that URL which should look like this: http://ksbrooks.booklikes.com/ and paste it in the comments below.  (Not sure where to find your URL? See the image below.) The “follow” button is found in the upper right-hand corner.

booklikes shelf page
Click to enlarge

[Don’t forget, if you right-click the links, you can choose to have them open in a separate tab so you don’t have to worry about navigating back and forth to pages.]

PLEASE be sure to reciprocate by following those who follow you. This is give and take. If everyone plays by the golden rule, we all benefit.