A bold new idea in self torture

As I’ve mentioned a few times already, I’ve been monkeying around with my website a bit. I’ve fully upgraded WordPress and all the plugins I’m using, cleaned up the code, reorganized the pages, and cleaned up the look. I still haven’t created my cool bunnies-vs-Cthulhu graphic or accompanying theme, but I think what I’ve got is much better looking now and loads faster and scrolls better.

To celebrate just a bit, I’ve put a new short story, “Joe’s Salvation“, up on my online stories page. It’s not my best story, and I think the satire is a bit blunt, but I enjoy it and I hope you do too.

And also to celebrate I’ve decided to create a brand new painful challenge for myself: the “Story of the Week”. The plan is that for the next year I will write a short story of at least 250 words every week. The rules are that they will be at least 250 words long, will be complete stories, and they will be due on Saturday at midnight each week. No breaks. No excuses. Beginning this week, which means I have between now and Saturday at midnight to come up with the first story. I also have some ideas for audience participation, as it were. I intend to post the stories on my blog, just to keep myself accountable. If anyone wants to play along with me, feel free!

After the year I expect to have at least fifty-one short stories that are pure crap. Maybe one or two of them will be okay. Who knows? But I also don’t intend to let these one-off stories interfere with my other writing. November, with NaNoWriMo, will be interesting, I think.

So, enjoy the (somewhat) leaner look of my site, enjoy the new short story, and when I start posting my story-of-the-week stories, I hope you enjoy those as well.