Inner Monologues @ Club Apocalypse

After getting the first draft of my latest article turned in yesterday, I met up with Nadine at an Alphabet City bar called Club Apocalypse, where her friend Alexis hosts a reading series called Inner Monologues that seems to be centered around young, as-yet-unpublished writers. At many of these events, that means wildly uneven quality, but Alexis put together a pretty good roster of writers dealing with the theme “Before the Fall.” Plus musical entertainment from Jessy Delfino, whom Alexis fairly accurately described as “a cross between Redd Foxx and Jewel” (although I would’ve put Suzanne Vega in the second position, myself). And $3 Rheingolds in cans. So keep an eye on Alexis’ blog and when she hosts “Scary Stories” in mid-October, you might want to drop by.

23 August 2005 | events |

Amazon Sells Shorts (Insert Your Own Stock Joke Here)

I’m putting the last touches on my latest PW feature story, but I took a break to read all the emails that piled up over the weekend, including a note fromJ Milligan (who debuted earlier this year with the novel Jack Fish) about “The Viking,” a new short story that’s being published by… Amazon.com?

Yep, Amazon Shorts is a platform for retailing “alternate chapters and scenes to well-known stories, personal memoirs about everything from food poisoning to contact lenses to potty training, one-act plays, and, of course, classic short stories.” All of which are priced to move at a uniform 49 cents.

John Scalzi was impressed with the program from a reader’s standpoint, especially since Amazon has decided not to coat the merchandise with digital rights management blockers. Once you buy a story and download the PDF file, check out the web page, or have the plain text sent to you, it’s yours to copy or reformat as you see fit. He also raises some significant questions about the economic costs and benefits for writers who might like to take part in the program, ultimately seeing it as “a potentially healthy alternative market for writers, and particularly for authors who bring their own fandom to the party.”

22 August 2005 | uncategorized |