Category Archives: Danny Tompkins Short Stories

Danny Tompkins Short Stories

A Short Story is Only as Good as its Cover

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Okay, readers, I need some opinions. My good friend Gary Boden has prepared two trial covers for my short story, “Mom’s Letter”. I know, some will think “A short story needs a cover?” When you list it on Amazon.com, it does. The cover conveys an impression to a buyer, and either draws them in or turns them away. It could be a neutral thing, but you want it to be a positive.

Gary took a photo, I took a photo, and he composed them into covers. The first one was before he knew the words “short story” needed to be on it. We’ll get that fixed; easy enough.

I know nothing about art and what’s attractive or what isn’t. I’d like to know what other people think. Which looks better? Which one would make you more likely to spend 99 cents to buy the short story? And, if you want to take the time, why?

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, freelance writing, Suite 101

A Chapter Here, An Article There

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So far this weekend has been productive. I wrote and posted one article at Suite101.com. I don’t think it’s one of my better articles, but it’s up and available for making money. I wrote a chapter in Documenting America. This was with research and writing complete in one day. I also did a little bit on another chapter. If I can complete the other chapter, and rewrite the third chapter to expand to full length, I will, with this blog post, have completed my writing goals for the weekend. I could then go and work on the research for two Bible studies. I’ve already done quite a bit on one of them Friday night and last night.

Well, my other writing goal was to research e-self-publishing some more. I left some things hanging on Friday. I’m pretty sure I don’t have the whole story concerning what to do with the mechanics of eSP. I found a good reference for that today, and will read it later. Events are moving in the right direction for this. I took some pictures yesterday to serve as a basis for the cover of “Mom’s Letter”. Hopefully they will work out. My goal for publishing that remains around March 1.

I have two other reasons for making this post. I want to test the feature for “scheduled posts” on Blogspot. I knew this was possible, but never saw how to do it until Friday. So I’m going to schedule this to post about an hour after I finish it, just to see how it works. The other is I want to post a couple of figures of my statistics for Suite101, for page views and earnings. Friday evening I merged several spreadsheets, so that I have graphs covering my entire time there. I’ll post them below, or at some place on the post. One is page views, per day and the seven day moving average. As can be seen, my page views are not going up even though I ad articles. The other shows the amount I make per article per month. This is also not going up, indicating that my articles are not gaining revenue over time, but in fact may be earning less revenue as they age. It’s perhaps too early to tell what I should do about this. For now it’s just data tabulated, graphed, and waiting for analysis.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, self-publishing

"Mom’s Letter" Will Be First

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I’ve made up my mind. The first work I will e-self-publish is my short story, “Mom’s Letter.”

A short story, you say? What demand is there for a stand-alone short story at any price? Enough, it would seem. Several authors report on Joe Konrath’s blog that their short stories are making enough money to justify the time and limited expense of formatting it, preparing a cover, and listing it. They are all published for $0.99, the minimum allowed for an Amazon Kindle title. The royalty on that is $0.35. So for every ten copies sold the short story will earn $3.50. If I could set it placed in a literary journal, the most I could realistically hope to make is $50.00 (though some pay higher). That means I’d need to sell 143 copies to justify going the eSP route.

This will give me experience with all the techno-stuff related to e-publishing. How to go from a Word document to a Kindle document. How to actually upload it to Kindle. How to see that it’s properly listed. How to add tags to it. How to select the genre. How to do an author page. How to do back-cover text. How to select the amount of preview material. So much to learn, so little time. Oh, yeah, and how to make and upload a cover.

That last one will be close to a deal killer. You might not think a short story has a cover, but for e-sales it does, just as a novel does. The cover shows up as a thumbnail view in Kindle listings, then as a larger view when clicked on. I’m not sure I can do this. I have no artistic skills, I’ve never used artistic software, and am pretty much clueless of what looks good and what doesn’t. But paying to have a cover made costs about $300 the eSP-ers tell me. That’s more than I’m willing to spend.

But I will do this. I have an idea for a cover that I’ll make and upload. If it looks terrible, maybe I’ll spring for someone to make one, if I can find a reduced cost for a short story cover. I ran “Mom’s Letter” through two critique groups, and three beta readers some time ago. I recently solicited beta readers at Suite101.com. Two of the four who were willing to read it have reported back, and say the story is ready to go, with maybe a tweak or two.

I don’t know what my time frame is. It would be nice to get it done before I head to Orlando later this month for a convention, but I’m not sure I can, given everything else going on. Early March for sure.

Stay tuned for results.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, self-publishing, Writing

Crowded, Uncrowded, Crowded, Uncrowded

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The new market I added to my post yesterday didn’t work out. So my schedule is less crowded than I thought. Well, that’s not entirely true. I can write for that market if I want, just not the type of article I wanted to write. The articles they want would require more research than the articles I wanted to write. So if I write for them, the schedule will be even more crowded; if I don’t write for them, less crowded. My choice.

I had my call with the Buildipedia editor today. We agreed to get two articles under contract with February deadlines. He also wants another article from me with an early March deadline, and a series of articles I could write that would string out through the year. This sounds about like the frequency of articles, the amount of time, I want to put into that source. So the schedule regarding Buildipedia is about as crowded as I thought and hoped it would be.

Everything I see about e-self-publishing, every new bit of information I gather or opinion I see from someone whose opinion I value, says this is something with no downside, something I should do. So that means I need to dispense with further research and get my short story and first e-book on line. That means I’ll have to learn how to format an e-book, or hire someone. That means I’ll have to learn how to design and produce a cover, or hire someone. That means I’ll have to come up to speed with marketing an e-book. All part of a schedule crowd.

But that also means I can ignore the need to go to writers conferences. Money saved, time saved. It means I can quit worrying about a platform big enough to impress an editor or agent. Time saved. It means I can quit looking for new freelance work, since that is mostly for the purposes of platform building. The income I’m getting from articles will pay for hiring the covers done, so I’m sure I’ll do that. It might also pay for hiring the formatting done, but I think I’ll at least take a stab at the formatting. If my technophobia results in my being unable to master the formatting, I can always then hire it out. All that’s wasted in that case is a little time, but that’s not even wasted if I can later use that initial effort and figure out the formatting for book two, or book three.

So is the schedule more crowded, as crowded, or less crowded than I thought it was when I posted yesterday? I think less crowded, due to that one market then under consideration now being out of consideration. I’ll hold that market in abeyance, always there for the future.

Documenting America and “Mom’s Letter”, here I come.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, poetry, Writing

‘Tis the Season – for Submittals

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I had good intentions of blogging over the weekend. The wife is away, I’ve kept the house neat, and had no major yard work to do. But a summer cold hit, and I found myself with no gumption to write much of anything. By Sunday evening I felt much better (thought my scratchy voice belied that), and I finished a difficult article at Suite101.com and came close to finishing a second. Today I’m much better, at work, and have energy for writing.

At the Absolute Write forums I responded to a post titled “when you fell in love with poetry…”. I explained my hatred for poetry for many years, brought on by a series of English teachers who insisted on interpretation of poems I didn’t see–but I don’t really want to get into that today. I got over my hatred of poetry, rather late in life I’m afraid, but not too late to embrace it for appreciation and try it for a writing outlet. As I wrote that post at AW, and as I thought about when it was I began enjoying and then writing poetry, it suddenly dawned on me that it was August 31, 2001 that I began writing my first serious adult poem. Eight years ago today. I remember it well, sitting out in the grassy area near the pines on the north side of our former house. But I prate.

The other important thing about this date is actually tomorrow, September 1. That is the day that many, many literary magazines open up again to submissions. Most of these are associated with universities and colleges, and close down during summer. September through May submission periods are quite common. Last spring I sent out six submissions for my short story, “Mom’s Letter”. I think I missed the submission window by a couple of days on one of them. Heard back on three or four–rejections.

With the new submissions season, I need to decide what to do about the short story and about submitting some poems. I didn’t submit any poems anywhere in 2008. I think I need to make some submissions this year. So over the next couple of weeks I’ll be reviewing my inventory, seeing which ones seem most promising to me. Then I’ll have to get back to work researching markets and see which ones look most promising to me. Then I’ll have to marry the two.

This isn’t the type of work I enjoy about writing, but it’s necessary, so I will do it. Now, back to engineering for a couple of hours.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Life Group lessons, Writing

An Unexpected Guest

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Wednesday night after church I stopped by Braum’s to buy a half gallon of milk, then headed the truck toward Bella Vista, twelve miles distant. I was about two miles from the house when my cell phone rang–or vibrated, actually. I dug it out of my side pocket and answered without checking to see who it was, expecting it to be Lynda. I can’t really see the display well enough when I’m driving to see the name or number.

It wasn’t Lynda, it was an old friend, Richard. We met Richard and his family in church in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia in 1981 (yes, there are clandestine churches in the land of the house of Saud). He was in town, had just called the house, gotten my cell phone number from Lynda. I was to go to the McDonald’s where he was waiting and guide him back to our house, where he would eat supper and spend the night. I had already passed that place, five or six miles back, but I did a U-turn and went and fetched him in.

We had a great time visiting until midnight, when I had to turn in to be able to function the next day, and he had to do the same to be able to drive to Tulsa and Oklahoma City the next day. A brief time in the morning was all we had after that. He followed me to the place where Arkansas 279 meets Arkansas 72. I went left; he went west. I last saw him and his wife and son in 2003 at his son’s wedding, before that in 2001 at our daughter’s wedding, before that in the mid-90s when their older son died of leukemia. We talked about the need to get together more often and Richard asked, “How do we make that happen?”

I wish I knew. When we are in St. Louis (where he and his wife live), we are always on a forced drive, trying to make tracks to Chicago or parts east (as we will be late this month) or on the return trip and anxious to get home. We all have busy lives, and spend them with our closest family. Keeping in touch with friends from decades ago is tough enough, let alone getting together. Still, we can work on making it happen.

So I am a day behind in everything I hoped to do. Last night I finished my Federal income tax. Yeah! Subject, of course, to mathematical checking and a last review against the instruction book. I should have it copied and in the mail on Monday. My Arkansas taxes should go pretty quick. I might start working on them tonight and try to have them done Monday as well.

I completed reading the book I had committed to critiquing, and enjoyed that. I have put aside all the books I was surreptitiously reading that have never been added to my reading pile, and am concentrating on a Bible study. It looks as if our Life Group may have a two week gap between lesson series in May, so I’m trying to put together a two-week lesson on one of the kings of Judah. It’s a fascinating study for me, whether I have to teach the lesson of not, as the accounts in 1st Kings and 2nd Chronicles differ both in time line and details, and I’m studying to reconcile them.

This weekend, hopefully, I will be back to a few writing activities. Actually, last night I read once more through “Mom’s Letter” and did a few minor edits, and I finished my research into potential markets and made my decisions on where to send it. This weekend I intend to make the e-mail and snail mail submissions. Next week, who knows? Perhaps another angel will visit us, and my best laid plans will again go astray.

Bible study, critique group, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, goals, Harmony of the gospels

February Goals

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After my blistering pace last month (just kidding), I’m going to establish fairly moderate goals this month.

1. Blog 10 to 12 times.

2. Monitor the five blogs I’ve been monitoring on a regular basis.

3. Complete as much of the Harmony of the gospels as I can. This will include:
– All NIV footnotes entered
– Formatting for reading completed
– Introduction written and typed
– Passage notes cleaned up and typed for a few key passages
– Appendixes identified, and one written

4. Market “Mom’s Letter” to someone; includes marketing research

5. Attend one critique group session; present a Documenting America column

6. More fully capture, for future development, a couple of Bible study ideas that have recently flittered through my mind and managed to make their way on to a capture list.

7. As time allows, work on my essay on the Resurrection.