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Showing posts from January, 2015

$100 a Month Writing Short Stories

As this new year begins, I pulled up Quickbooks to look at my sales numbers (because I get an odd satisfaction from looking at numbers).  At the conclusion of 2014 I completed my second year in a row where I averaged a little over $100 a month over the course of the year. As a side note for future record's sake, I was on course to make $150 a month for the first half of the year.  And then Amazon decided to release it's Kindle Unlimited program.  In a nutshell: it messed up the selling algorithms for indie publishers everywhere.  But things are starting to stabilize once more. Even with this temporary setback, the fact that I was able to more or less maintain my monthly average for another entire year proved that slow 'n steady is really the key in this business.  Continually write, continually publish.  The more books you have in your catalog, the higher the likelihood that someone will find your work. It also solidified in my mind that I can make money from sho

Review of "Children of the Artificial Womb," short story by Edward Lange

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Summary:   Hector, a member of the Plasmid street gang and product of the artificial womb, is not doing well. His girlfriend is pregnant, his best friend is a murderous, technological genius and his gang boss is a violent bully. But when a once in a lifetime opportunity comes his way, Hector will have to choose between safety and freedom, in the dangerous world of gang warfare.   This story can also be found in the short fiction collection, Nightmares and Premonitions. Review: I've reviewed Lange's work before and I have to start out by saying how impressed I was by his progress as a writer.  This story--compared to the one I read before--is sleeker, more engaging and, most importantly, has characters that felt  real .  I was immediately drawn into the turf wars and the emotional struggle behind the character's actions. The plot itself is interesting.  It feels very vintage scifi in that it presents a questionable concept (the artificial womb) and explores the r