But you'll have to. In the mean time, if you have a few moments I have a small story for you. It might give you a chill. If you desire a bit of a shiver down your spine, I suspect that reading this with the lights low and a nice cold wind rattling branches outside your windows will help with that effect. If you meditate on the accompanying photograph, that will likely aid as well.
This is only available as a free (hooray!) download so I kind of wish Lulu had a "Get it now" button instead of a "Buy it now" button I could use. Oh well!
Get it now!
Once again, you can go to my Lulu storefront. Remind me some other time to talk about how I feel about the term "Lulu storefront." And the photograph is courtesy of Frank Slack.
So I have this short story that's been languishing on my hard drive. I finished it after some time, and even had a friend who is smarter than I am edit it. I could, of course, send it off to some magazines or a literary journal. I could even send it to the journal I'm technically working for. But being keenly interested in What Technology Can Do For You, I thought I'd do something else. Plus, this is more immediate and interactive. And fun!
I've thrown the story into a pdf, added a cover, and put it on Lulu. What's Lulu? It's where you can self-publish. I've always been skeptical for various reasons, but there's no reason not to have a little fun.
"Sing heav'nly muse" is not nearly as pretentious as it sounds. This is a story about Jake, who thinks he knows more than he does; Eve, who thinks the world is slightly worse than it is; and Jane, who is pretty normal despite all her protestations.
You can get this story as a hard copy for $6. It gives me $0.94 and gives you something pretty and entertaining. I thought about setting it slightly higher, but I then discovered that Lulu adds shipping costs.
Or you can get it as a free download. And if you like it, you can still get the hard copy for $6 after that.
In any case:
EDIT: Now in Kindle format!
Your turn. Tell me, what do you think? (Of the story, of the idea of Lulu, of the weather...)
Note: Feel free to spread this around if you so desire.
Sometime early in my college career I moved on from reading creative blogs, which I liked because they encouraged and inspired me once in a while. I made the jump to also reading political blogs. And from there, to political blogs that had a decidedly feminist angle.
(I also started reading Dooce, which is irrelevant to this story, but a fun blog with wonderful photographs.)
So here I was, at a christian university reading feminist blogs, while during the day boys held the door for me because of their built-in chivalry.
For at least two years I read feminist blogs before I started noticing the imbalance between male and female characters. In the books I read for class. In the movies I watched (one lucky semester, for class). Even, finally, I realized I had that same imbalance in the stories I wrote.
That was a surprise.
( Keep reading... )
*
As a final comment, there are some excellent stories with good female characters out there. I am surprisingly bad at recalling things I've read in the past four years, so my examples run in the direction of older YA: Ella Enchanted, The Girl Who Owned A City, The Babysitter's Club, Animorphs. But I'm blanking past that, even though I know there are adult novels that fit this.
- Music:Sons and Daughters - Split Lips
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