Bites from 13 Bites, Vol. 3

For our final Halloween Fright Reads, news from editor, Alan Seeger about his latest horror anthology.  (I participated in 13 BITES: VOLUME 1.)

The 13 BITES series began as an idea that I presented in a Facebook group in 2013, asking if anyone would be interested in doing a short story anthology; the response was so overwhelming, I decided to do it every year.  So 13 BITES Volume III, the third in the annual horror anthology.

A few nibbles from the bites from this year's installment:

The man was still there, as still as a statue. And so was the body.

-- THE NAIL IN THE COFFIN, Sarah Brett

“I’m not here to bargain,” she snapped at him. “A potion comes with five years, not a day more.”

-- FINE DINING, J. A. Clark

“You kind of do, but the tour is very informative, I highly recommended it, and here’s a little welcome present to help calm your nerves...” Satan made a popsicle appear as if by sleight of hand, and handed it to Danny.

-- DANNY’S INFERNO, Joseph Picard

The fresher the corpse the better, he reasoned; it would look more natural, and bits were less likely to fall off it.   

-- DANSE MACABRE, Tabitha Ormiston-Smith

There in front of him lay Alice. She was still alive, but not for long.

-- THE EVIL DEED, Bruno Santos

“Chimpanzees,” Neil corrected him. “If they were from Earth they would be closer to chimpanzees.”

-- ORANGE AND RED AND REDDISH ORANGE, Thomas Hansen

 

At that precise instant the sky seemed to kiss the earth, reducing the man’s field of vision to a single purple-black flash of light. Time passed – minutes, possibly hours, the man could not tell which.

-- ONE MAN’S ONE YEARS’ NEW YORK TIMES, Luke Jon Isbrecht

A person can only take sitting in an uncomfortable chair for so long before he or she begins to look for somewhere else to sit, and sit she did; she sat on practically every guy they knew.   

-- THE KILL KIT, Alan Seeger

Maybe if I hadn’t stopped for gas on the way, or remembered to switch off my cell phone, or even make sure I had locked the boot of the car, would have been a good start.

-- STACEY WALLBECKER, Gregg Cunningham

How to Make Ebooks Visual: Alan Seeger

Today’s guest post is with writer and editor Alan Seeger. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Alan on two short story anthologies, 13 Bites and, now, Summer Dreams.

First, here’s some background on Alan:

Science-fiction author and editor Alan Seeger was born in San Francisco and grew up in Oklahoma. In his teens, he began making music, which became his focus for the next thirty years or so. But writing was never far from his heart, and in 2013, he published a collection of short stories Lucid Dreaming and the first two novels in his Gatespace Trilogy, Pinball and Replay. He resides on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

In Summer Dreams, you decided to make the book, including the Kindle Book, “visual” by adding images for each story. What was the impetus for this decision?

It began when a couple of the contributors included “dingbat” style images with their stories as icons to separate different sections of their stories. I debated as to whether to leave them in, but then it occurred to me to see if I couldn’t find something to use for each of the stories.  The thing that ties the stories together is that they deal with events that take place during the summer season, yet they are all quite different -- none of them are about lying on the sand at a California beach, I’ll tell you that -- and so one story has the silhouette of a woman swimming, one has bats -- yeah, bats, no, this isn’t the Halloween anthology… one has an old pickup truck… well, you’ll just have to read it, won’t you?

image size was standardized to 1.5 in

Of the two authors who included decorative elements, one used images inserted into her document and one used characters from a font. When I did a test run, I found that Kindle recognized the images but converted the font-based character into whatever font it used for the rest of the document, so instead of the bat, for example, you might have a letter Q or V. I decided to go into my image program and create an image of that character, and use that (instead of the font-based character. )

One side effect: I realized that I could dissect the title of the book from the layered Photoshop version of the cover (shown to the right), and use that on the Title Page. This takes the words "Summer Dreams" and puts ripples into it so it looks as if it’s in the water… the background is swirly swimming pool water. I took that swirly title and placed it on the title page, changed it to black and white. It looks really sharp, in my opinion. 

So many Kindle books look (to my mind) unattractive compared to the books that I used to read, which had illustrations and book borders.  Will we ever return to visually appealing books?

I hope so. I mean, it’s still possible to publish things as a PDF file, which was how I published Metaverse Messenger, an online newspaper covering events in virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) from 2005-2009.

Kindle publishing, though, raises problems such as screen size vs. document size and so on. Different e-readers, even different Kindles (original Kindle, DX, Paperwhite, Kindle Fire) have different sized screens, pixel-wise, and different amounts of text can fit on them. That complicates things any time you want to dress up your book and make it pretty.  But people are starting to get the hang of what it takes to make Kindle and other e-readers display things the way we want them to be seen.

Learn about Alan's writing at www.alanseeger.net.
His editing services are available at  www.five59.com. 
Facebook www.facebook.com/Five59 
Twitter as @Pinballwizard59.

Short Story Anthologies: find me in these

Some of my blog readers prefer print to online, and I have had a few requests asking about where I can be found in print. In 2013, my short fiction appeared in several print publications-- some of which have appeared in the past month.

For those who are interested, here is a round-up:

 "The Library Girl" in Crack the Spine, Fall 2013.  

This is one of my most personal stories - a story about friendship and youthful hopes-- and it was published online earlier in the year.  I was gratified that Kerry Foley, editor of Crack the Spine,  chose to include it in the Fall 2013 Anthology.  As it happens, the entire anthology is a pleasure to read. You can find it here. 

"Chopin for Igor" appears in Contrary Cats.

This is a compilation of feline tales from the hard-working Catherine May, editor of Indigo Mosaic.  Catherine's abandoned her publishing business, so this is her swan song in book publishing.  It's a lovely collection of cat stories-- and "Chopin for Igor" is the final tale in the book, a spooky tale of those who are haunted by cats.  It's available at Lulu.  

"Happy Halloween" appears in 13 Bites

One of the happier collaborations I've been involved in has been this charming (and scary) book, 13 Bites, which was edited by the diligent, Alan Seeger.  Alan suggested to the BookGoodies Author's Group on Facebook that we contribute stories for an anthology whose profits would be donated to a children's literacy group.  I had a published story, "Happy Halloween" that melded perfectly into the others-- it was first published in the now defunct, Ear Hustler.

The book is available on Amazon.

"Career Girl" appears in Love Hurts

Another of my favorite editors, Eric Bosarge, of the fantastic online magazine, Eric's Hysterics, included my romantic comedy story, "Career Girl," in his anthology, Love Hurts.  Eric's one of my favorite editors because he actually improved my story -- yes, ego-bruising as it was, he suggested that I tighten it and make it funnier.  I did and it led me to pursue this character in other publications as well.

The book is available on Amazon.

"A Strange Courtship" appears in The Linnet's Wings, Spring 2013


The wonderful and creative editorial team at The Linnet's Wings re-printed my short story, "A Strange Courtship" in the Spring Edition of the magazine, which is now sold here.  I especially admired the artwork in this issue, so it's worth owning for that alone - always lovely when a magazine illustrates work in the old-fashioned way, as was done here.

This is available through CreateSpace.

Book to support Children's Literacy Organizations

I'm delighted that my short story, "Happy Halloween," which originally was published in The Ear Hustler Magazine's Halloween Edition, has been reprinted in a book whose sales are designated for several different charitable organizations that target children's literacy.

The book, 13 Bites, is available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions.  It features thirteen spooky tales from writers whom I've been privileged to meet online (through the Bookgoodies Authors Group.)  Alan Seeger, one of the group members, generously acted as editor.

All sales support children's literacy groups.