Author interview: Chuck Heintzelman

How did you become interested in short stories? 
As a reader, I fell in love with short stories as a kid.  Especially Edgar Allen Poe.  Then Lovecraft and anything bizarre and weird I could get my hands on.  I plowed through magazines like Ripley's Believe It or Not, but really I became an indiscriminant reader, consuming anything and everything.

Unlike most authors, I wasn't pounding away at a typewriter in the womb.  I didn't start writing until my mid-30's.  Wow, that's ten years ago now.  After writing several deservedly unpublishable novels I started on short stories and began having lots of fun.  My goal this year is to create 50 new short stories.  I'm currently writing my seventh and having a blast doing it.

As an author, do you think writing short stories is worthwhile? Why? 
Absolutely.  The problem many authors I've talked to have is they have too many ideas.  Writing short stories allows you to explore more ideas in a shorter amount of time.  As far as learning the craft, short stories are great.  You can write 4 or 5 thousand words, polish them the best you can, and get feedback quickly. From start to finish it only takes a week or two instead of three months writing a novel and several weeks getting feedback.

But, above all, the most worthwhile aspect of writing a short story is entertainment.  Both for the author and the reader.

What types of short story promotion have worked for you? 
I'm new to the promotion game.  Heh, I only discovered KindleBoards a week ago.  Having a website is a must.  I get decent traffic on mine.  Recently I've had over a hundred visitors in a single day.  That may not sound like much, but to me it's exciting.

I've put some stories up at SmashWords and for the last week have been allowing people to download them for free.  In the last two days I've had 75 people download stories of mine.  I know these aren't JA Konrath or Amanda Hocking numbers, but keep in mind that three months ago I didn't have any stories out anywhere except my web site.

What types of short story promotion have not worked for you? 
I haven't been adept at using Twitter to promote my stories.  I only have a couple hundred followers, but have had only a handful of visits to my website from Twitter.

Do you consider 99 cents to be a fair price for a standalone short story?  Why or why  not? 
Without a doubt 99 cents is a fair price.  Look at the price of a single cup of coffee.  And I'm not even talking fancy Starbuck's coffee.  If you figure people read prose at a rate of between 250 to 300 words per minute.  That's 16 - 20 minutes of enjoyment for a 5,000 word story.

Check out Chuck's site

Comments

  1. Alain GomezApril 7, 2011 at 12:12 AM

    Personally, I'm not convinced either that Twitter is worth it =)

    ReplyDelete
  2. James EveringtonApril 7, 2011 at 8:52 AM

    Me neither - Twitter just appears to be yet *another* way for me and my mates to talk rubbish with each other, which I'm not sure we needed... (that said, if anyone does want to follow me I'm @JHEverington !)

    At the risk of being repetitive, another good interview Alain - I think you need to find someone who hates short stories, just to mix it up a bit!

    Off to check out Chuck's site now.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alain GomezApril 7, 2011 at 12:08 PM

    I thought about that, actually. I just haven't figured out a way to put a request on Kindleboards. "Hey, I run a short story blog and I would like some guest posts from people who dislike the genre."

    I don't even have a Twitter account. It seems to me like you (royal you) end up getting a couple hundred followers but most of them couldn't not care less about what you put. Is that a wrong assessment?

    ReplyDelete
  4. shanaApril 7, 2011 at 7:44 PM

    Thanks for this Chuck and Alain!

    As for Twitter...I dunno. I'm on there, but most of the time I wonder why.

    And frankly all the trends can get annoying, especially follow friday. Don't see the point.

    Shana Hammaker
    Twelve Terrifying Tales for 2011

    ReplyDelete
  5. Alain GomezApril 7, 2011 at 8:55 PM

    Eesh... trends... that's almost as bad as school spirit *shudder*.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of "Ferryman" by Nigel Edwards

Summary: "A mythology grew up around the Ferrymen, fostered by a mystique which they wrapped around themselves. Some thought them amoral servants of a ruling elite, sanctioned to undertake work beyond legitimate resolution; others with more fanciful imaginations – or who were more devout, depending on your point of view – believed them emissaries of Evil, with a capital E." Could the Ferrymen become real in your lifetime? Should they? Read this thoughtful and disturbing near-future science fiction story and decide for yourself. Review: This was a fantastic short story.  "Well-written" doesn't even begin to describe Ferryman ; it's engrossing.  The simple, clean style perfectly highlights our precise  protagonist.  If this future Edwards presents to us does in fact become a reality, the character he describes is exactly the type of person who would become a Ferryman: highly competent with the hint of a god complex. What's  especially clever abou...
Read more

The Short Story Project

I was introduced to the short story genre in high school and simply fell in love.  It's completely different from reading a novel.  A novel is a lengthy involvement.  Character development and plot must transport you into the author's world as the story gradually unfolds. Short stories are distinct experience.  A good short story writer will make you care about the outcome of the characters even though you may not necessarily know anything about them.  It is a complete experience in one sitting; not too unlike reading a poem.  You read the short story/poem for itself and not for the hope that it will drag out for 800 pages and then maybe have a sequel. The short story genre has become a lost art.  When newspapers were at their height, a writer could make a name for himself by publishing a short piece of fiction every week.  Charles Dickens is a perfect example of this.  Since then, the literary world changed.  You have to have an age...
Read more

Interview with Author Hugh Howey

Welcome to Book Brouhaha! Why don't you start out by introducing yourself and telling us a little about "Wool." Thanks for having me, Alain! I suppose I'm just this normal guy who just wrote a little story called Wool. It's about a group of people who live underground. When their society turns on itself, it threatens all of mankind. In a way, it poses the conundrum of every revolution: How do you destroy an unjust social structure without the collateral damage being worse than the injustices were? I suppose the most interesting thing about me, personally, is that I lived on a sailboat while I was in college. This led to a career as a yacht captain, which sent me all over the Caribbean and the East Coast. I didn't start writing in earnest until my wife dragged me away from the sea and into the mountains. I've always loved the short form. I've been told that it isn't as marketable, even though science fiction has a long and glorious history of c...
Read more