Happy Canada Day, Readers! Free Books!

Canadian Author Michael Poeltl is giving away the second book of his wildly successful dystopian/post-apocalyptic trilogy; The Judas Syndrome, on Canada Day.

"Rebith; book two of the series is arguably my favourite of the three." When we asked Poeltl why, he had this to say, "because book two demonstrates my growth as a writer, a more defined story line and characters who were already developed. I didn't need to build them anymore, they had a life of their own."

He tells us that the last few scenes of book one are revisited in the beginning of book two. "Sara, Joel's (the protagonist from book one) girlfriend tells the story in Rebirth, picking up where book one left off." From there on the pace is quick and plot twists keep the reader`s interest until it leaves you wanting more.

Thankfully, Poeltl has completed the entire trilogy, and all the books are available on Kindle and in paperback. He's even released an anthology featuring all three books in a single paperback.

"Honestly, book one has since been edited a number of times, but it's not absolutely necessary you read it to get the gist of what's happened, and what is happening in book two."

If it's all the same to Mr. Poeltl, we'd recommend reading book one. The character development offers insights into the players, some of which will follow you right through to book three!

Books on Your Commute Can Take You Further Than Your Stop

Every commuter has that one person they can’t stop staring at, or the reverse. Both are kind of creepy, so stop staring! Immerse yourself in a book. Even if the book is only going to act as cover for the staring. If that’s the case it might as well be an attractive book. One that might make others start noticing you, in a good way. A book immediately makes a person more interesting, you immediately have layers. Instant intellect. Perhaps in time, the object of your affection will return your looks with a renewed sense of interest and a happily ever after is suddenly possible.

Now, if you’re one being gawked at, a book is the perfect camouflage. At least, it can hide your face and thwart the efforts of the creepy guy eyeballing you from the next row. The less opportunity you give him to catch a glimpse, the more likely he’ll be to give up on you and move on to the next target.

Your commute can take you anywhere when you’re reading a book. Novels are great, but a collection of short stories are arguably the best choice for the commuter. Instant gratification. Whether you’re riding the bus or train for fifteen minutes or fifty, there is a short story for that!

Michael Poeltl has recently entered the world of the short story with his June release of Waning Metaphorically. This is a collection of fourteen stories. Some are twenty-five pages while one is just a paragraph. Hemmingway once wrote a short story in six words and claimed it was his masterpiece. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It takes you on an emotional ride and tells a much larger story of anticipation, loss and suffering as well as rebounding. In a short story you don’t have the space to fill in all the details, and when done well, you shouldn’t have to.

Poeltl’s new collection of multi-genre shorts was given an appealing cover design meant to resemble a sandwich board, listing each of the fourteen stories in chalkboard style fonts. Waning Metaphorically is available now in both paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

For more on the author and the book visit http://www.mikepoeltl.com/Waning_Metaphorically.html

MichaelPoeltl has released a new collection of short stories and is the author of four novels, one children's novella, a collection of short stories and two educational children and young reader’s books.

Amazon's Kindle Select Payment Plan Has Changed.

So, what`s Amazon up to now, Indies?

I see they’ve made an announcement about their new concept where they only pay authors of self-published Kindle books enlisted in the Kindle Select program based on the amount of content – or pages – the readers actually consume.

As an author with eight books on Amazon, and several in the Kindle Select program, it will be interesting to see whether this concept fails or not. I think it will be different for every genre. Short stories should do well, while novels that are slow to start ought to do poorly. A short story collection or anthology using this method, I would think, is destined to take-off!

Lucky me! I’ve recently published a short story collection and had planned to include it into the Kindle Select program. Now I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good idea. However, in the service of indie Author’s everywhere, I will include Waning Metaphorically into this program and report back with the stats.

I assume there will be a cost-per-page-turned in order to tally up each books worth to the reader, and those monies handed over to the author? That’s what I’m getting from this. But what that number per page is, I haven’t found out as yet.

If you have it, please respond and share.

Enter to Win New Anthology of Short Stories Today! Book Contest on Goodreads!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Waning Metaphorically

by Michael Poeltl

Giveaway ends July 20, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

A New Collection of Short Stories and Flash Fiction Released - Summer Reading List

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

“A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.”
– Neil Gaiman

“I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up.”
– Alice Munro

The short story is once more in vogue. After Alice Munro, a short story author from Canada, won the Nobel Prize for literature at age 82– the short story seems to be experiencing a renaissance.

Every story has a life span. Whether that happens to be a novel, novella, short, or what has more recently arisen in the literary arts: flash fiction, each has its purpose and its format. Each is an art form. Like poetry. A short offers less meat and more action to get from beginning to middle to end. Flash offers even less to digest and puts you right in the action whereas a novel can meander and take its time with character development and placing the reader in the scene.

“As many author’s do, I have my own slush pile,” explains Poeltl, “I knew the vast majority of my random scenes and false starts wouldn’t sustain novel length works, and I realized that literary shorts play an important role for the reader. Many of the stories within the pages of my own anthology are such refugees. At least, that’s how they’d begun their literary lives: a thought, a quote, a supposition.”  Poeltl has since revised and edited, lengthened or shortened, these scenes, and added fresh stories and narratives to accompany them in their own multi-genre book: Waning Metaphorically.

Poeltl states in the Forward of his new collection: Life is a Metaphor. A metaphor is a symbol. A symbol is a sign. Watch for the signs. Like all stories, they can be watered-down to act as metaphor or parables; but unlike parables, metaphors can be interpreted differently, depending on the subject. A waning metaphor therefore, only sustains resolve if a person decides to recognize it.

So enjoy the instant gratification shorts offer in their ability to disclose the intimate secrets of a life or lives in not so many words.

Pick up your Pre-order Kindle Version today!

Short Stories and Their Relevance in Today's Market

So I've been asking a few writing and publishing groups on LinkedIn about their opinion of the short story.  I wanted to research this subject before committing to a published anthology of my own shorts and flash fiction. This post will cover a few things my research has unearthed, and from it you can draw your own conclusions on the short story's relevance.

There was a time when newspapers published serials. The greats like Charles Dickens and Poe were fond of these. Money was to be made as well! Then magazines became the popular medium to carry the short story. Buying shorts to include into a genre specific magazine was a major draw for readers.
Both have seemingly lost their punch. But the short story lives on.

Websites like Wattpad carry millions of short stories and serials from authors hoping to be discovered. No one is getting paid for these, but paying sites do still exist. Besides, writing short stories are meant to bring in an audience rather than make you money right?

Wrong. The short story is an art form. It won the Nobel Prize last year for literature. It's not playing second fiddle to novels, and never has. In fact the short has been experiencing a renaissance of sorts recently. Even the film industry has been picking up shorts because a 500 page and up novel is much more difficult to write into a script than a 20-80 page story.

Fan fiction is a great way to enter the short story market too. I wrote a short concerning a character in my trilogy, The Judas Syndrome, which told the story as seen through her eyes after book three had ended. I wrote it in just twelve pages.

The problem with selling your short stories one by one via Amazon and Smashwords is that many self-published authors are selling their novels for $0.99, and the majority of readers look for deals. Multiple consumer studies in 2013 and 2014 confirmed that readers won't spend the money for a short versus a full-length. So your short story, though every bit as good, if not better than a novel, only offers 20 to 80 pages of literary bliss while the novel is 200 and up.

The fix? Put your shorts and flash fiction into a collection. An anthology. Find the stories that share a common theme or genre and sell them as a package deal. Now you're attracting the larger audience to your works.

My own collection will be available very soon, and will be found in both paperback and ebook formats, entitled: Waning Metaphorically. Follow this blog or find me on Facebook and Twitter, Goodreads, linkedIn and Google+