This is a Special Edition

by

In Today’s Journal

* Why Special Edition?
* Reminder: True Pulp Extra Rewards
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Why Special Edition?

I don’t have much for you today, but I wanted to pass along a post from Johnny B. Truant and a reminder.

First, my (sincere) apology for passing along what you’ll see in the full title of the post. Hell, even I found it offensive.

If you’re wondering, the word the author used didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that there was absolutely no reason to use it. The use was strictly gratuitous.

Especially in today’s society, writers “offend” someone almost constantly without even trying. It’s a risk we take anyway, so why risk offending people when there’s absolutely no possible up side to it?

Nobody should have to tell even other writers not to use gratuitous “bad” language.

Anyway, the meat of the article sounds like a really great thing for fiction writers, so I wanted to pass it along.

Here’s the link to the article: Let’s Get Collegiate….

Reminder: True Pulp Extra Rewards

Only 8 days to go! Donate $10 to the TRUE PULP Kickstarter.

Of course, that will get you the TRUE PULP anthology.

Then email me to let me know you’ve donated to the Kickstarter, and I’ll also send you both the Echoes of Hemingway anthology AND either

  • ANY of my own 10-story collections OR
  • my just-published 14-story collection Echoes of Ellison.

Echoes of Hemingway

contains 20 stories that cross the genres from noir to action-adventure to literary to science fiction to fantasy and more.

The anthology features 13 authors from bestsellers to prizewinning prolific professional storytellers to amateurs. And every story had its seed in a story or novel by Ernest Hemingway.

You can read the description of any of my 10-story collections by visiting StoneThread Publishing and clicking on any cover that interests you.

Echoes of Ellison

This is an eclectic collection of 14 intense short stories in the style of Harlan Ellison. They range from the not-quite normal to the fantastic, from the tragic to the comedic, from the dark tale to the fairytale.

  • You’ll encounter a mind cleaner who enters the mind of an angel. What will he find there? You’ll climb aboard a bull with a rodeo cowboy who’s beleaguered repeatedly by a black angus bull in the arena and a raven-haired woman in his dreams.
  • You’ll witness what happens when the one woman whom Giacomo Casanova has loved down through the ages works to bring him back to life, and you’ll read the story of a Death Valley hiker who encounters, and is bold enough to question, God—face to face.
  • You’ll accompany a scriptwriter (and enter his mind) as he makes his way over rough terrain through a nuclear holocaust, and you’ll watch a storm chaser in Oklahoma as he remembers who—or maybe what—he really is.
  • You’ll share the frustrations of a rural farm boy who was forced into manhood by the death of his father, and watch as he’s tested to his limits. Then you’ll learn the ground rules about all the frightening little things we don’t generally admit to noticing but that we all know are there.
  • You’ll consider the morality of euthanasia and how you might one day pay the oldest debt, and you’ll wade deeper into the moral morass with a cruel boy who loves to crush bugs, and the price that must be paid, and by whom.
  • You’ll also accompany a Cajun man on a single-minded mission into the backwoods of Louisiana, then witness a hell on future-Earth in “Six Days in May.”
  • Penultimately, you’ll relive the story of Little Red Riding Hood with a new, improved Red who believes in magic and in herself.

Finally, after the style of Hemingway in the Finca Vigia edition of The Complete Stories, you’ll also get an extra short story delivered in a series of vignettes. That series of vignettes is at once a short story, a memoir, and a confession. It is truth and fiction, reality and fantasy. Of course, you’re free to decide which is which.

If you enjoy Harlan Ellison like stories written in the protagonist’s own unique voice—come along for some fun.

That’s it! Ya’ll have a great day.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 700

Writing of

Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXX

Fiction for July..………………………. 2590
Fiction for 2025………………………. 523397
Nonfiction for July…………………….. 8230
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 159860
2025 consumable words…………….. 675643

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 13
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 117
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 301
Short story collections……………………. 29

Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.

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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.