Wednesday February 17, 2010

“July 4: Easter” at CellStories

An old story of mine, “July 4: Easter,” is featured today at CellStories.net. You can read it on your cellphone, but not on your computer, since CellStories (as the name suggests) is a cellphone-only story-delivery system, which I think is pretty neat.

There are a lot of literary websites around these days—and I mean a lot—so deciding where to send work (for me, at least) has become about going with my gut. If I see a site that is doing something unusual or interesting, it goes on the list. (I don’t need a long list. I’m not very prolific.) In fact, “July 4: Easter” was first published in Twelve Stories, where I submitted it because I liked the concept of publishing when (and only when) the editors had amassed 12 stories they liked.

CellStories first appeared on my radar in August, when its founder—Daniel Sinker, a professor and founding editor of Punk Planet magazine—posted a call at Kickstarter to defray server costs for the not-yet-launched project. In September, I attended an event about e-books and digital publishing thrown by the Toronto-based lit site Joyland—I have a new story appearing there in April—and CellStories, in absentia. Sinker wasn’t there, but Joyland’s Brian Joseph Davis read from his manifesto, “Here Be Monsters: Thoughts on the future of words on a page.” You can (and should) read it in its entirety here, but here’s a sample:

Today, as we ponder the future of fiction, the future of journalism, the future of words on pages, there are two types of people: the cartographers and the badass Krakens.

The cartographers will do what they’ve always done: steer you toward the known. Those are the people that want you to spend $300 to buy a device that emulates as much of the old system as possible — locked in distribution, publishers, the works. They want you (and the money folks, especially the money folks) to know that everything that you’ve learned doesn’t have to be unlearned. The Krakens? Well, we’re swimming around your boat for all kinds of reasons.

These are the sort of people I want to hang with as the future of digital publishing emerges. Krakens, not cartographers. Or that’s what my gut tells me.

Enjoy the story. Today is Ash Wednesday, which couldn’t be more appropriate. You’ll see what I mean.