Mark Barrett

That’s the title — and this is the cover — for the short story collection I’ve been working on, which I referred to in an earlier post by the TYOTE acronym. I put the collection on Smashwords last night. [Book removed 01/03/17.]

There are twelve short stories in the collection. The first three stories are free. The price for the full collection is $4.99, for reasons that have been exhaustively detailed in previous posts. (Regular readers are now laughing themselves silly or suffering flashbacks.)

I am making three stories available for three reasons. First, I like the idea that a prospective online customer can peruse part of a work as they might in a bookstore. Second, I believe self-published authors have an obligation to demonstrate that they can carry a tune before asking someone to pay for their work. Third, I intendThe Year of the Elm to create an overall effect, and I feel an obligation to make the structure clear to the prospective buyer. Reading the first three stories should do that.

The next step for TYOTE is to put together a print-on-demand (POD) version, probably through Lightning Source. I’ll have more to say about TYOTE, and about the process of publishing it myself, in subsequent posts.

On the horizon, my next project involves a novel I’m revising, and what may or may not be an innovative attempt to meld the strengths of the internet as a medium with the craft aims of traditional storytelling. I believe that all mediums are eventually turned to fiction, and my hope would be to show how that might be better done with the internet itself.

— Mark Barrett

Six months ago I put up my first post on this blog. My goals at the time were pretty straightforward:

Re-establish an internet presence for myself as a writer. I had a professional web site for years that was devoted to my interactive work. I took it down when I stepped back from interactive in the middle of the 90’s. (Blog posts and documents from that site have been added to Ditchwalk, and can be located via the Archive and Docs tabs on the main nav.)
Investigate the (r)evolution taking place in publishing, how the self-publishing/online movement is impacting traditional publishing, and any opportunities this presents.
Get up to speed on the new wave of social networking tools. In a few short years, online forums and e-mail groups were out, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter were in.
Get up to speed on new tech, including e-readers, online publishing sites, self-publishing service providers, and print-on-demand (POD) technology.
Get up to speed on issues facing writers and storytellers in this brave new world. (Google’s deal with the Authors Guild quickly caught my eye.)
Identify opinion leaders and stress-test their opinions.
Network with others who share any or all of these interests.

Six months later I feel good about what I’ve learned and accomplished. There’s more I want to do, and more I need to know, but today I feel as if I’m on the crest of the breaking publishing wave rather than paddling behind it. [ Read more ]