Kristopher Kelly's Blog, page 13

Podcast Episode 1.01, "A Life of Their Own"

Presenting the first episode of the Daukherville.com podcast. This episode features a reading of the very short story, "A Life of Their Own."

Project McSweeneys.net: The First Ten Rejection Notes

I have to hand it to them; they responded to all my stories within a week, and each one came with a personal rejection note.

I love getting rejection notes, and I really enjoyed these. I felt like sharing them.

1. "Appreciate your giving us a shot with this one, but I'm afraid we're not going to use it."

2. "Thanks for trying us again, but I'm going to pass. The premise here doesn't reel me in enough."

3. "A little too on the slight side for our use, I'm afraid. Thanks for trying us, nonetheless."

4. "This one reads too much like a short story, which we really don't run. Take a look through our main feature archives to get a better sense of what we're after."

5. "This has its charms, but I'm afraid I'm going to pass. Thanks for the look."

6. "I'm afraid we're a little Facebooked out at the moment. It's a popular subject in our inbox. Thanks for the look, nonetheless."

7. "Thanks for trying us again, but I'm afraid I'm going to pass."

8. "This one's conceit is maybe just a little too far over on the silly side. Thanks for the read, though."

9. "In general, scatological (or in this case urinelogical (?)) material is not a good fit for us. Thanks for thinking of us again nonetheless."

10. "Afraid I'm going to pass. Doesn't spark enough laughs and the premise feels a little untimely since we're well past the end of summer."

… So now it's onto a new year, and I'm reloading. Hopefully with things that are less urinelogical, more charming, less slight, more timely, not short-story-ish, and have nothing whatsoever to do with Facebook.

The target narrows, but I used to bullseye wamprats in my T16 back home.

Someday, McSweeney's! Someday!!

Note: All the pieces were published post-rejection on this site under the tag Project McSweeney's.

Should I Enroll My eBook in Kindle Select?

Short answer: the promotional period is great, but the borrowing aspect is not great for a book with a low price point.

Here's the longer answer …

Recently, I decided to enroll my book in the Kindle Select program. I loved the idea of lending my book to readers somehow. The requirement that the book be exclusive to Amazon didn't bother me, because I wasn't selling any copies through Barnes and Noble or Apple's iBookstore, anyway.

At the same time, however, I decided my price point was too high. $2.99 for an unknown author's oddball collection of weird and depressing stories? Maybe $0.99 was a bit better fit. This proved to be the case, as sales instantly improved at the lower price.

The trouble is … at $0.99, is it really worth it to anyone to borrow the book through Kindle Select? Turns out, very few people borrowed it. I understand why. It's just not a very compelling or cost-effective use of the borrow option, which to my understanding is a once-a-month kind of affair. I actually ended up feeling guilty when people borrowed it.

However! The ultimate silver lining are those five days where you can give your book away for free through Amazon. I loved seeing the numbers skyrocket during my free promotional days, and I realized: I like readers more than I like money right now. I'd probably leave the book free if I could.

It's going to be a tough call for me after the ninety days of exclusivity are up to see if I keep my collection as a Kindle Select book or not. My guess would be not. While I wish I could offer the book for free more often, the 85 days of borrowing don't add up to much for me, and I'd rather it be out there in more places.

If I could stomach pricing my book at $5.99, maybe it would be a different story.

Please Do Forget to Write

Dear Lisbeth,

I've had such a good time meeting you this summer! I'm really going to miss you, and Camp Wamkeag, and all our friends, and all those sunset canoe rides around the island. Hanging out on the picnic tables outside our cabins at night, swatting flies off our bodies, sweltering in the heat in the afternoon, and stealing kisses behind the art shed after making tie-dyed t-shirts–this has all been so transformative, such a total blast.

This place fills me with such warmth. It's really hard to think about going home to my stupid small town, where people think I'm weird and don't pay much attention to me. It has meant so much, to have this romance this summer, and to at last finally kiss a girl. I didn't think I'd have to wait until I was thirteen to cross that milestone, but now that I have, I can't imagine I'll ever forget you.

I like you a lot, Lisbeth. I will miss you terribly.

Just please don't write.

Basically, I want us to be like Rose and Jack in that movie Titanic–together for a few days, and then you stay on your door floating in the water, and I slip into icy oblivion. All great summer camp romances are like that movie–short, sweet, and without time enough to discover any flaws. If they'd both made it to the States, things probably wouldn't have worked out.

What are we going to do? Write back and forth about the asparagus we had for dinner and how much we hate our stepfathers? How stupid geometry class is? Sorry, but long-winded exposition does not make the best reading material.

And you know as well as I do that there's a vague but definite sense of arbitrariness to our affections, sweet as they are. We may be young, but we're not stupid. We chose each other because we were both available and because the risk was so low, given that camp lasts only a week, and the big final dance in the main lodge that caps it off doesn't even require fancy dress!

Oh, those slow dances! Getting a bit misty here. We really connected. And we didn't have to say anything.

But seriously, let's not ever move that far past the surface. We're young. We're cute. We both like each other for liking each other. Relationships rarely come and go with such a lack of guilt and heartbreak. Later, there won't be summer camp to go to, and we'll have to give reasons for not wanting to see each other, or we'll have to work faster and with more obvious callousness during some one-night layover somewhere.

This is a special time of our lives.

So please do forget to write, and let this time we had together remain pure, shallow, short, and perfect.

Love always (unless you ask for more of it),

Pete

3-Day Promotion: Kindle Version of I Held My Breath as Long as I Could is Now Free on Amazon!

From today, Dec. 15, through Saturday, Dec. 17, the Kindle/Kindle Fire ebook version of I Held My Breath as Long as I Could will be available on Amzaon for free.

Tell your friends. Tell your neighbors. Tell anyone with an Amazon ebook reader.

I'm willing to bet there's at least one story in there for everyone.

Don't miss out!

Things You Didn't Want to Think About Today: Trough-Pissing Strategies for Today's Urban Male

You're going to suffer if you don't think things through in advance, and trough-pissing is no exception.

Let me take a wild guess; you were going to get up from your barstool, walk into that bathroom, face that long steel trough-style urinal, and just open up right over the drain. Am I right? Yeah, I know that's what a short-term-thinking lemming such as yourself was going to do, because you like to go through life without pausing to ask yourself the important questions along the way. Well, let me force you to reflect on the situation in which you were about to put yourself.

You were trained at an early age to piss right into the center of the pot, and that usually works. So when it comes to a trough, you think, "Awesome! I got the spot right above the drain!" You're thinking that's a good thing, because you believe that the best course of action is to get rid of your waste straightaway.

Except you haven't thought it through. Sure, your decision here is all well and good if you live in a world where no one else exists, but then you probably wouldn't end up pissing into a trough in the first place. Sad fact is we have to share this rock–all however-many-billions of us–and some of those billions are going to come into that restroom with you. And there you'll be, pissing foolishly away directly over the drain, no doubt with some stupid day-dreamy smile on your face, and they'll have no choice but to take an upstream position. Now you'll start to make a funny face, because the stench of someone else's urine (probably some rank copper-color that really punches its way on up your nostrils) will commingle with your own (you probably drink lots of water and pride yourself on the clarity of your stream, and it will pain you, seeing it polluted with urobilins from someone else's kidneys), and you'll find yourself thinking, "Aw, man, this is disgusting, why is that other guy pissing into my piss?"

Well, this is how a trough urinal works. This is the way it's been designed. Don't come crying to me if you wander like a child into the path of another man's urine.

I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the next time you go to a trough for a little micturition, get as far away from the drain as you can. Yes, it will seem silly to stand all the way over to the side and watch your piss roll down the long length of the trough. But I assure you, it will be worth it when that second man comes in and has to take his position–knowingly, grudgingly, sadly–closer to the drain.

I can't explain it any better than I have, but there's a reason I conduct interviews in bars with trough urinals. Nothing beats telling some downstream motherfucker that he's not going to get the job at the firm while he wrinkles his nose, the stench of my urine in his nostrils as his eyes watch his hopes for his future swirl down the drain.

I just wish I could make all failure so olfactory.

Free Mini-Collection, 3×6, Available Now!

3x6: A Collection of Three Stories

To say thank you to everyone who bought and read my collection, I Held My Breath as Long as I Could, I'm pleased to offer a very short bonus collection of three 600-words-or-less short stories, 3×6. Included are:

"A Life of Their Own": Satan's latest attempt to get a child hits a snag.

"Embrace the Ground": A vicious alien allows a man a last glimpse at the home in which he grew up.

"The Art of the Dead": A man attends the funeral of a good friend.

These were all written as entries in Lulu.com's recent short story contest. Since Amazon.com refuses to allow me to sell anything for free, I've chosen to publish this through Lulu, and to simply give away copies of the ebook (in .mobi format for Kindle and Kindle Fire and .epub for iPad, iPhone, and Nook) from my own website.

Hope you enjoy these!

I Held My Breath as Long as I Could eBook now exclusive to Amazon Kindle Select

Hello all,

Given the extremely low sales on iTunes and Barnes & Noble, I decided to try an experiment. Over the next 90 days, I Held My Breath as Long as I Could, my collection of 23 short stories, will be available as an ebook exclusively for the Kindle and Kindle Fire (paperback will still be available in lots of places). The reason behind this change is that I'm intrigued by the Kindle Select program, which allows anyone with an Amazon Prime account to borrow my ebook for free. I like the model; it seems like it could actually work out better for me and would-be readers.

We'll see. If you hate that I've gone this direction, say so, and once the exclusivity period expires I'll go back to offering the ebook everywhere.

In the meantime, if you really want an ebook copy for Nook or iPad / iPhone … email me. Might be something we could work out.

Take Us to Your Remaster

We've given up tolerating fixity. Who the hell writes in stone, anymore, amirite?

We're here to see someone about his ephemerality.

It's about ingenuity and keeping up with the times.

We're not just thinking outside the box; we're ripping the box out of the archivists' hands, dumping the contents over their heads, slapping them about the head and face with the empty container, and then setting them on fire and flushing their ashes down the toilet.

Provenance this, motherfuckers!

Newer versions of our demands will float out of your computer screen, pool on your desk, and sing you whatever song seems best suited to your purchasing history. So keep in mind, this list is beta, perhaps even alpha. All of it is subject to change; meeting these demands is no guarantee of meeting these demands.

File that under "THINGS TO BE AWARE OF." Put it right beside, "THESE CREATURES ARE HERE TO KILL ME IF I DON'T COMPLY."

The point is, we see flaws in your original master. We'd rather you take us direct to the remaster. We believe the remaster will know how to deal with us in a more satisfying manner than the last person we saw.

Oh, you are the remaster? Very well, then. Good to know, and a pleasant surprise, if we do say so ourselves. We should have known you'd look different.

To the point, then. These are our demands:

1. Remastermind, the game (let's play it!): We no longer want to be locked into one combination of four colored pegs. If you guess any of them correctly, obviously our strategy was flawed, and we would like to be able to change it at will. This will result in a much more challenging game for you, we feel.

2. Remaster locks (use them!): The combination changes every time you turn the dial. This prevents the lock from ever opening. Truly, what is the point of a lock being able to be unlocked in the first place? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? We feel it does.

13. Whatever George Lucas wants, he gets. No more fucking crying about it, either. Seriously. You people. It's like you've never seen someone bleeding out their own nipples; you're always complaining the loudest about the least important things.

c. Remasturbation (do it!): Immediately after finishing, do it once more, with feeling. Make it faster, more intense. Don't be ashamed; we don't think anyone gets anything right the first time.

iv. We'd like to point out that the 2003 Stereo Remastered Version of "Roxanne" by The Police, which corrects the pitch of the first few notes and thereby renders Sting's odd little laugh perfectly nonsensical, is re-re-re-reeeeeee-genius, and the person responsible for it should be given a Medal of Re-Achievement.

FIVE! This one has actually become demand six. See below.

The rest of our demands have been deleted, because, upon reflection five minutes from now, they probably won't / didn't seem so interesting. In lieu of them, we would just like to request a slice of pie, pumpkin if you have it. If you don't have pie, well, your face will be remastered, along with some of your internal organs.

You know, your face really would look better digitally enhanced for widescreen televisions.

We are getting the feeling that the original version of you is about to go out of print.

Come on over here. We've got work to do. Don't be shy.

Stop that screaming. We're sure if your parents had had our technology when you were born, this is how they would have wanted you to look.

Review: Fight Club

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read this book for a second time after giving the movie a rest for a few years. The book reads like a fever dream of underground boxing and how-to recipes for making explosives out of soap, sprinkled with just enough self-empowerment rhetoric to give it some philosophical heft. I don't picture Ed Norton when I read this story of a man who creates an anarchic club that spirals wildly out of his control, but I do appreciate the way the film translated this story into something a bit more streamlined and concrete. I like the first half of the book better than the second, although sometimes Palahniuk's style reads more like summary than story. The themes are all there; I'm not so sure about the scenes and the drama, which often seem more like incident than meaningful steps along a path. There's a murder at the end of the book that, in particular, seems to come out of nowhere. And, like any Chuck Palahniuk book, the motifs are repeated a bit too much (if Chuck P. were a band, all his songs would have the same beat). Even so, it's a fun book, visceral and thought-provoking.





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