His letter ended: “And so, glorious friend, I hope that my $33 Million will be safe with you. Awaiting your reply.”
He pressed send.
The Nigerian prince sat back in his chair and sighed. Some day, he hoped, he would find someone with whom to share his vast inheritance.
Some day.
Graham Stark is a co-founder of LoadingReadyRun, an online sketch comedy troupe with four regular series on The Escapist.
We called the dog El Pancho. I never knew why. Maybe it was the weird brown spot on his back. He had two lame legs and always smelled like rotting cheddar, and sat at the flagpole every day after school, but no one ever came.
One day, neither did he.
John Funk is Games Editor at The Escapist, and has been gaming and writing for most of his life thus far. He has far too many plastic robot models on his desk at work and thinks those dirty Horde can go jump off a bridge.
“Hmmm, haven’t been flossing?” questioned the dentist.
I became increasingly more uncomfortable in the chair as she continued looking at my teeth.
“And you didn’t get her flowers for your anniversary?”
How could she know that? How?
“How… how did you know?”
“I’m your dentist,” she said. “I know everything.”
Justin Boyd draws LeftHandedToons, a fantastic webcomic drawn by right-handed artists with their left hands, along with Drew Mokris. LHT updates every weekday, and is the funniest comic drawn left-handed by right-handers on the internet.
Editor’s Note: I didn’t ask, but I’m assuming he wrote this with his left hand, which just makes it that much awesomer.
For those of you who have been waiting to buy Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One directly from the Kindle Store and may have missed the announcement earlier on Twitter, I thought I’d give you a heads up that the book has passed through the publishing phase and is now available.
You can buy it in the US Kindle Store or the UK Kindle Store, or in other countries’ Kindle Stores, as well.
I am the Six-Year-Old Batman.
I swore an oath on the grave of my tummy I would rid the kitchen of semi-sweet chips melted in crispy, chewy batter. By day I have a million open-air playdates. By night? I am the bib-caped crusader.
Cookies are a cowardly and superstitious lot.
Woody Tondorf is a writer/director living in Los Angeles. His newest series on Hulu, The Morning After, can be seen in every country that ends in “States of America.” For everyone else, there’s youtube.com/elevatorshow.
The wind blew through the trees as the rain pelted down, streaming off the slate roofs, cascading like four waterfalls into the waterlogged courtyard. Three feet deep, and the living room had started to flood.
Janey looked to Max, the brilliant, infallible architect, and scowled.
“You’re kinda stupid, aren’t you?”
MCM is the creator of the award-winning series “RollBots” as well as the author of many books, including “Typhoon”, “Fission Chips” and “The Vector”, all of which were easier to write than this story. You can read and buy his writing at http://1889.ca.
It’s official: Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One can now be purchased in print from Lulu.com and as an ebook bundle directly through the FiftyWordStories.com Store. It should be available as a Kindle-only ebook file through the Kindle Store soon, after it passes through the product approval process.
If you have any questions, read the Store FAQ, which I’ll be updating as we go along.
I’ll be kicking off Launch Week with our first special guest story, by MCM, a little later today, so stay tuned!
Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One goes on sale tomorrow!
That means that this is Launch Week, and Launch Week means that I’ll be posting a story from a special guest every day, Monday to Friday, to celebrate! I’ll be featuring stories from MCM (1889.ca) and Woody Tondorf (Elevator Show, The Morning After), among others. There’s some great writing coming at you this week.
Release Details:
In preparation for the book release, I’ve spent the last couple of days putting together the FiftyWordStories.com Store. Today I brought the store to life (with a few hiccups; sorry if you were trying to access the site while I was tinkering with things), and you can see the print and ebook versions of Volume One lounging tantalizingly just out of reach. The products will go live tomorrow, which means that you’ll be able to
If you aren’t sure whether to download the ebook bundle from the FiftyWordStories.com Store or buy the Kindle version from the Kindle Store, the difference is that if you buy the bundle, you get the two other formats, as well, but you have to manually sync the mobi to your Kindle instead of downloading it directly to the device. I earn almost twice as much revenue from direct purchases vs. Kindle Store ones, but the choice is yours. If you buy from the Kindle Store and contact me afterwards, I’ll email you the ePub and PDF, as well.
Finally, if you know me in person and would like to buy the book in print, I may be able to save you a few dollars if you’re willing to wait until I have enough orders to get a “bulk” discount (and reduced shipping rate). If you’re interested in going that route, or if you have any questions or find any bugs, send me an email at tim@fiftywordstories.com.
FiftyWordStories.com is holding a Valentine’s Day contest. Here’s the scoop: send in your Valentine’s Day-themed fifty-word story, based on the prompt given below, and you could win a copy of the Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One ebook!
The rules are as follows:
Stories will be judged on their overall quality and creativity, and on how well they use the provided prompts. Make every word count, and think unconventionally: I want to smile, sigh, laugh, or have some other kind of emotional reaction.
The three best stories, as judged by myself, will be posted to the site on February 14, 2011, and the writer of the best story will receive the Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One ebook bundle (containing all three available file formats) via email.
Send your entries to tim@fiftywordstories.com, with “Valentine’s Day Contest” in the subject area. Include the story, a title, and a brief biography (one or two sentences) in the body of your email. Limit three entered stories per person. Entries close on February 11, 2011, at 11:59 PM Pacific time.
If you don’t have a lot of spending money lying around, this could be your chance to get your (electronic) hands on over five thousand words of microfiction. So get writing!
He knew it was a blessing to be special, to stand out, but sometimes it could be very isolating. Though surrounded by a sea of people, he felt alone, like a cabbage in a field of lettuce.
Plus this old Ukrainian lady kept trying to make soup out of him.
This story is based on a title suggested by @KatieInTheAttic.