I am about finished with editing my lastest novel
but still working on a good title
it should be ready for publishing very soon

OK....I'm currently working on "Moving Targets," "White Rainbow," and the book of comic strips. Got three others on the metaphorical back burner.

I am about finished with editing my lastest novel
but still working on a good title
it should be ready for publishing very soon

Anyone attempting to write their first book, and if so, will you publish it anytime soon?

I'm writing my first book e-book..it's hard work

I have always wanted to write and have decided to try and get serious about it. I'm trying to decide how I want to come @ it, in what person, fiction, non-fiction, or a mix, memoirs,etc.

An old friend from high school who I found out was an author advised that to get started it might be easier to start w/short stories and then told me about some fiction and non-fiction sites to submit to.

I've started my 1st short story and I'm still trying to organize my head about a book.

I was told the same thing about short stories and I'm thinking about going that route as well.

How "short" is a short story as far as chapters and pages goes?

I'm not sure there are any real rules about that....

In the two books of short stories I've done, they range anywhere from a few pages to about 120. I think when they get up to about 100 pages, they're technically called "novelettes" or "This is a good idea but I can't quite make a whole book out of it."

To give you an idea of how I handle this sort of thing, here's a snip from the next book.

A girl named Lyndsey has discovered a new color, which no one else can see. She takes the piece of newspaper with the new color on it to school with her, shows it around, hoping someone else will be able to see it....the newspaper has four colored blotches, spilled paints, on it -- one orange, one gray, one blue, and the new color, which everyone else only sees as white....

**********

Finally, she goes to the art teacher, a rotund, snowmanlike fellow named Mr. Chastain. (He is often drawn, by his students, with a carrot for a nose, and an old stovepipe hat.)

Mr. Chastain looks approvingly at the newspaper, holds it up in front of himself at different angles, making “mmmmmm” noises as he does so.

“Modern art,” he finally says, favoring Lyndsey with a brief grin. “It is made of nothing and everything, yet people tend to pooh-pooh it whenever they see it. Warhol could have told you that, he understood. A Brillo box. It is art, too, because it represents an aesthetic – a failed aesthetic, perhaps, but then a successful aesthetic generally ceases to be any kind of aesthetic at all.”

Lyndsey has no idea what the man is talking about. She suspects that, perhaps, he doesn’t either.

“A successful aesthetic – do you know what that becomes, Lyndsey? A trend, a tradition, a timeless and tedious inertia. It’s why we have two political parties, really. If you think about it. The common man has no stomach for subtlety, let alone choice, in any real sense of the word. The shame – the real and true crying shame – is that no one cares anymore. Art is art is art, no? No. It’s product, it’s a sellout. Self-sellout, really, because art is art is art is money now. Take out some of the extraneous arts, and art is money. Why? Because it represents the people who create it, and those people are all obsessed with money.”

She wants to interrupt him, but she is stumped as to how or when to make the attempt.

“Creativity has been put into a box, and then the box has been nailed shut. And buried. At sea, or maybe in space. Our creativity nowadays is like a gun with no bullets. You can hold it in your hand and threaten people, but it has no bite. There’s no ammo. All that’s left is a hand holding a gun, and a few memories of loud bangs.”

“Mr. Chastain, I wanted to ask you a question about this newspaper.”

“Hmmmmmm? Oh, yes, of course. I notice you have placed some colors onto a few small areas of the page. It strikes me as an indictment of the world at large. News is product no less than art is product. You combine the two, in a minimalist setting – small dots of color intruding on small bits of news. Reductio ad absurdum. At what point does the relevance, the meaning, the clarity, the direction, disappear altogether? Is this an extra credit project? I’ll tell you what, it shows an interesting perspective on art. The contrast, the colored spots on the black and white newsprint, this is a dichotomy. I like it. It’s good. It’s not MOMA good, but it’s good. I’ll give you a B+. How’s that?”

Lyndsey brushes her hair out of her eyes. “That’s great, Mr. Chastain, I could really use the extra credit, but I also wanted to ask you a question about the colors.”

The teacher peers at the paper again, turns it, shifts it, holds it above his head.

“I like the gray the best, to be honest. It has a sort of solid nobility to it. I could see wearing a suit that color, if I wanted to blend in somewhere and not be noticed. It’s a soothing color. The blue is a bit infantile for my tastes, and the orange is a bit too gaudy. I would say tone it down, add some yellow, make it less metallic.”

“And those are the only colors you see?”

Chastain looks again; and, for just a fraction of a second, Lyndsey is convinced that he sees something there, something different and unusual...

But no.

“Newsprint, a few grainy photos, and a bad drawing of the sun up in the corner with the weather forecast. Oh, and there seems to be an empty white spot for some reason. But I don’t see any more colors.”

He offers the newspaper page back to her. She takes it, and sighs. “OK, thanks, Mr. Chastain. I will think about what you said....”

....until I understand it, which will probably take another 4000 years....

**********

Hi Lex, thanks for the info.

So tell me...how exactly does one begin and end a short story? That must be take a great deal of creative thoughts...(or a "tongue in cheek" frame of mind, to say the least)

Nice form. I'm dying to see that color myself.