March Donation Bonus: The Passenger

The bonus story for people who donate $5.00 or more to the site during March is a horror story called “The Passenger”.

Here’s an excerpt:
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February Donation Gift: DarkSpace

The February reward for people who donate at least $5.00 to the site is a science fiction story entitled “DarkSpace.” It weighs in at 8000 words and will be available for the entire month of February. Post comments/feedback here.

Economics, Gangs, and Why I’m Not Published

Honestly, I haven’t wanted to be published since I was in high school. I lost that desire when I hit college and realized that, for all the unpleasant work involved, the likelihood of me being the next H.P Lovecraft was slim to none. Maybe I’ll give my impressions of the publishing industry and what I mean by “unpleasant work” another day; the point is that a long time ago I realized that, no matter how hard I worked, I was probably not going to be the next Terry Brooks or Stephen King. In my opinion, true or not, success in that field was largely determined by factors other than how much or how well you wrote. So, basically, I quit the gang.

What?
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January Reward: Whatever Comes Along

The January 2008 reward for donating $5.00 is a horror story called “Whatever Comes Along”. Its 2200 words of happy holiday cheer! Or not.

The download will be valid from now until the last day of the January, at which time a different story will be available.

Donation Rewards

Beginning now, anyone who donates $5.00 to Darkicon.com will get a special thank-you gift.

I will write one story every month that I will give out as a gift for people who help support this site. The story will change every month, so if you donate $5.00 this month, you get a story… and if you donate another $5.00 next month, you get a different story. Keep in mind that you are not buying the stories, you are receiving them as a thank you gift for donating.
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What’s Coming in 2008

What’s Already Happened:

A few months ago I decided to get off my ass and start writing again. I also decided that since writing takes so much time and energy, It would really be nice if I could pay a few bills with it. And if I couldn’t, then there’s other things I could do with that time and energy that COULD pay a few bills.

Much of what happened after that point has been preliminary and warm-up work. I’ve redesigned the site, ditching the CMS and converting all the old stories to a much simpler format. I’ve restored a few old stories that, for a variety of reasons, haven’t been seen on the site for a while. I’ve started this blog to keep people informed about what the hell is going on. And, most importantly, I’ve started writing again. No, not as much or as regularly as I would like, but it’s a start.
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Damn, It Feels Good.

Writing, that is.

For those who haven’t been paying attention: I’ve started writing again. I’m remembering why I want to do this for a living in the first place. It’s a lot of work (anyone who says it isn’t, lies), but it also makes me the happiest I’ve been in quite a few months.

But enough about that. I’m not posting to say how great writing is, I’m posting to tell you just what the hell is going on.

WHAT am I writing, WHEN will I write [fill in favorite genre/character here] and when will you get a chance to see it? Have I given up on the making money stuff? If not, what’s the plan? Yeah… about all that…
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Ignore this link

It won’t help.

Wow

According to Project Wonderful, the advertising service that I use, DarkIcon.com had over 1600 page views yesterday. That’s WELL over twice what I normally get, and over 500 of those views came from StumbleUpon (where I haven’t paid for any advertising in over 2 weeks).

Continuous traffic at that level would be a hell of a start. It won’t pay any bills, but it’s a huge step in the right directly. Sadly, today I seem to be over-compensating, and my traffic is well below normal. Oh well…

Oh, now THIS is nice… I think

I’m going through my traffic logs and I see some people hitting my site from some guy’s blog. I check it out, and what do I find?

A very familiar story. Very familiar. (Basically he’s got a copy of Crimes of Personality cut-and-pasted into his blog.)

Ummm… huh?
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