|
|
Foreword Allow me to explain… Flush Fiction is a true indicator of just what we
are and what we’re trying to do at Yard Dog Press. A bunch of us were sitting around
at my house for our yearly party which we call ConDome –we are nothing if not
dripping with class- I was discussing the inability of some authors to gauge how long it
will take them to read one of their stories. This had become a problem because of the Yard
Dog Press traveling Road Show… Don’t know what that is? The Yard Dog press traveling Road Show is
something that we as a group do at any convention that will allow it. You see we had
noticed that readings were becoming increasingly poorly attended; in order for a reading
to be successful you need to have an audience. So Bill Allen and I were talking about how
to do this and I said I thought we’d do better if several authors were at one reading
and all did short funny stuff, that’s when Bill came up with the Road show idea, we
could do readings and acts and maybe some stand up. Turn it into more of a show and then
more people would come. And then one of those moments of pure genius happened. Just before
we were supposed to do the very first road show –the night before in fact- we all
went to a reading Melanie Fletcher was doing, and behind her just for fun Sherri Dean
started to do a pantomime of everything Mel was reading and by the time the road show took
the stage it had become a show, where one of the writers would read and other writers and
artists would do an interpretive dance to what they were reading. This became highly
successful and packed the house until they started to give us bigger and bigger rooms and
more and more time. Now back to the problem that arose because
of the road shows. I would tell the writers that they had five minutes to read and they
would read for ten or fifteen minutes thus running one hour shows into two hour shows and
two hour shows into three and some writers still didn’t get to read. I was discussing
my idea for a solution at ConDome. I had decided that we needed to put together a book of
flash fiction showcasing all our writers and giving them a piece that they could read in
five minutes or less. We decided the pieces should be funny, but didn’t have to be,
they should be fairly visual so that the interpretive dancers had something to do, they
had to be under a thousand words, and they had to be complete stories, no vignettes. After
several minutes of discussion someone said, “Just the right length for reading on the
can.” and then Matt Reiten screams out, Flush
Fiction, we should call it Flush Fiction. “Genius!” I proclaimed,
“Stories to be read in one sitting.” Brilliant idea then much latter as I started
to write out the guidelines I realized we had a huge problem. There would be dozens of
writers the royalties statements all by themselves would be a nightmare and by the time
you split the money that many ways we’d be writing checks for .20 this wasn’t an
option, but being a professional writer myself I don’t believe in writers giving away
their work, so the next question became how do I make this worthwhile to everyone and
still make it feasible. The answer came when one of our writers had a health scare. This
isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last, and here’s
the thing most of our writers either have no health benefits or have them but would still
be screwed if they got sick because it wouldn’t cover everything and guess what, they
aren’t rich. So it was decided that we would put 75% of the profits from Flush Fiction into a health fund that could be used
to help out our writers and artists if they needed it. So Flush
Fiction is not just a showcase of many of our very talented writers and artists, but
it is also a testament to what we truly are, a community of artists bound together by our
art and our need to entertain our cliental. If I stayed in my own head and didn’t
listen and watch the writers and artists Yard Dog Press would be just like every other
house ;a business with no soul, not a vital living entity with a personality all it’s
own. Yard Dog Press is not an extension of me; it is the ideas of everyone who works for
it. When you buy a yard Dog Press book you aren’t just supplying yourself with some
great inexpensive entertainment, you’re also helping to preserve a style of writing
science fiction (I’m from the old school where Science fiction meant horror and
fantasy too without having to say all three every time) which is sadly harder and harder
to find on book store shelves. You aren’t just supporting my dream to bring our sort
of Sci Fi back to the readers but you’re supporting the dreams and hopes of every
writer and artist that works for us, a dream that there is still a place for our work in
the hearts of science fiction fans and readers in general. I edited Flush Fiction, but held to my promise not to
reject anything. I have always contended that a writer writes their best work when they
write just exactly what they want to write without worrying about what any editor, agent
or publisher has to say. I think the stories in Flush
Fiction prove my point; there isn’t a dog in the bunch. Creative people are
always being told that they need to have their hands tied to do better work. I was told by
one big shot editor from a Now some of the biggest names in this
business make their livings writing 700 thousand word vignettes. They wouldn’t know
how to tell a complete store if it jumped up and bit them on the ass so keep that in mind
as you read the stories in Flush Fiction. None
of these stories are over a thousand words, every one of them is a complete story, with a
beginning a middle and an end that’s conclusive. If a certain rich and famous writer
who shall remain nameless can’t finish a story in several extremely long books how
genius are these fuckers that can do it in under 1000 words. |
