Category Archives: News

News about the site.

NEWS: Draw Results

News, , , , ,

It happened later than I originally intended it to, but the draw for the contest to win a print copy of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One has taken place!

So…

I guess I should say who won, then.

I put all the names into a hat, and mixed ’em up good.

Then I closed my eyes, swirled ’em all around, and pulled out…

Congratulations to sketchlayerJosh, who entered via Twitter! I’ll be getting in touch so I can send a book winging its way along to you (Canada Post permitting).

Thank you to everyone who got involved on Twitter and Liked my Facebook page to enter.

NEWS: GeekingOutAbout Contest Results

News, , ,

The 50-word story contest over at www.GeekingOutAbout.com has wrapped up, and the winners have been announced!

Congratulations to Chris Fries and Leslie Hanna, who won an ebook copy of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One, and to D.C. McMillen, whose story The 8:15 Train (which you can read below) earned the $25 top prize.

 

The 8:15 Train

We purposely collided on the 8:15. Before reaching this pivotal moment, we’d spent weeks admiring each other from afar. She laughed, taking the blame for our faux collision. Some small talk, then we played hooky at a nearby hotel. Now I take the 7:45.

 

It was a great contest, and really difficult to judge. Head over to the GeekingOutAbout post to read some more of the really strong entries.

NEWS: Draw for Contest Winner Will Happen Soon

News, , , , , ,

I had intended to do the draw for the winner of the contest to win a print copy of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One today, but my schedule isn’t allowing for it, unfortunately.

So the draw is postponed until tomorrow (Tuesday) evening. I’ll post the results here and on Twitter. Thank you to everyone who entered!

NEWS: Win a Print Copy of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One

News, , , , , , , ,

If you don’t yet have a copy of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One in print, how would you like a chance to win one?

On Monday, June 13, I will draw one name from a hat to win a print copy of Volume One.

How do you get your name in the hat? There are three “fronts” to the contest, and each can get you one entry. (That’s a maximum of three entries per person, for all you Math majors.)

First, you can share a link to FiftyWordStories.com on Twitter, making sure to include the hashtag #50wordstories.

Second, you can Like my new Page on Facebook.

Third, you can join in the discussion about the short story Saucer from my recent short fiction collection, Living and Dying. Everyone who comments on this blog post will receive an entry. If you haven’t read Saucer yet, get the collection here!

Good luck, everyone!

Note: If the winner lives outside of North America, they’ll have to cover the difference between the North American and outside-of-North-America shipping.

Living and Dying: A Short Fiction Collection

News, , , , , , , , ,

On June 1, I’m going to be releasing a collection of short stories and flash fiction called Living and Dying. It’ll be available for $0.99 on the Kindle Store and as a pay-what-you-want download through my blog, TimSevenhuysen.com. Today I released some details about a couple of special offers that you can take advantage of; you can read about them here.

I wanted to share about this here on 50WS because it was the release of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One that really pushed me towards releasing some of my other writing. I figured that if 50WS readers enjoy my fifty-word stories, maybe you’ll enjoy some of my longer-form writing, too.

Also, since I’m “opening” the TScom Store, I’m probably going to redirect the 50WS Store over there soon. My experiment with using a shopping plugin on this site for file downloads had some success, but mostly it turned out to be a big headache and more trouble than it was worth, so I’m going to be trying a bit of a different approach. By the time I have Fifty-Word Stories: Volume Two ready, I’ll hopefully have a better system in place for making it available.

Until Year Two of 50WS is finished (in just over a month!) and Volume Two is ready, you’ll still be getting new stories here every weekday (including two stories every weekday for the month of June), and I’ll also be releasing more short stories and flash fiction at TimSevenhuysen.com. So spread the word! Big things continue to happen here and elsewhere with my writing (and your submissions), and it’s all thanks to people like you who come to the site to read, rate, and comment. Thank you!

NEWS: Two-a-Days

News, , ,

I’ve been receiving lots of great submissions over the past few weeks, and I like to do my best to get every good story onto the site at some point. Until now, whenever I’ve had “too many” submissions, there has always come a time when submissions were sparse for a while, so I could use up the backlog. But my inbox is overflowing!

So starting on Monday, May 30, and continuing until Friday, July 1, I will be posting a guest submission every weekday, alongside my own daily stories.

That’s right: for the next month+, you’ll be getting two stories to read every weekday!

By the way, just because I have a lot of submissions doesn’t mean I’m not looking for more. I’m always happy to receive more guest stories.

NEWS: GeekingOutAbout.com Guest Post and Contest

News, , , , , ,

Today www.GeekingOutAbout.com shared a guest post I wrote for them, about my experiences writing fifty-word stories and some of my other favourite microfiction formats and websites. This post has taken a little while to put together, and to find the right timing for sharing it, but I’m really excited to get it out there for people to see, and GeekingOutAbout is a great place to post it. Head over there to get some insight and recommendations from me, including an excerpt from the Tips and Tricks section of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One.

In addition to sharing my guest post, GeekingOutAbout is also running a 50-word story contest, to celebrate their one-year anniversary (congratulations, by the way, guys!). The details are all here. The best three stories sent to geekingoutabout@gmail.com by May 31 will win a free Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One ebook bundle, and the first-prize winner will also receive $25 to the online retailer of their choice! That’s a pretty awesome prize, in my opinion, so get writing, and I can’t wait to see all of your submissions.

NEWS: Guest Week and Book Price Reduction

News, , , , , ,

This week is going to look a little different from most weeks at 50WS. Instead of having one story from a guest writer and four from me, you’re going to be seeing five great stories sent in by readers.

The reason for doing a full guest week is that I’m getting married in 12 days, and life is a little… hectic, to say the least. I barely have time to think about writing more stories right now.

I’m not 100% sure what next week will look like yet, but I know that the stories you’ll be seeing this week are really good, even if I didn’t write them. :)

 

On another note, as you’ll see in the announcement area at the top of the page, I’ve dropped the prices on my book to $2.99 for the ebook and $9.99 for the print book from Lulu. Hit up the Store to see how you can grab a (now more affordable) copy for yourself!

NEWS: Story Ratings Broken

News, , , , , ,

I hope site issues don’t come in threes, because if they do, we may be in for another one before long.

Having recently solved the “slow site” problem, I’m now trying to figure out why story ratings aren’t working. You can mouse-over the stars, but they don’t register a click.

I still have hope that there will be a way to solve this. So far reinstalling the GD Star Rating plugin from scratch (after backing up all of the ratings and settings) hasn’t worked, nor has reverting to an earlier version of the plugin. If I’m not able to find a way to get ratings going again, I’ll have to find some form of alternative, preferably one that allows me to keep the history of past ratings.

I’ll keep you updated. Until this gets resolved, you can always express your opinions about stories by leaving a comment, instead, or by sharing the ones you like using the buttons underneath each post.

NEWS: Site Speed Improvements

News, , , , , ,

You’ve probably noticed that the site has been really slow over the past few weeks. After trying a handful of different strategies for dealing with this (including hiding under the covers and hoping it would just go away), I finally opened a support ticket with my web host (JaguarPC.com, which has always been very good to me), and they pointed out an old, forgotten forum on an old, forgotten site of mine that was monopolizing the server’s CPU. The forum had gotten infested with bots and spam, so I went in, wiped it, disabled it for the future, and will be deleting it for good later today.

Now the site is loading at normal speeds again! Hooray! To celebrate, I’m going to post two guest stories this Monday.