Read Time: 4 minutes

“In my dotage, I am reduced to bloggery.”—King Lear, Act VII, line 4,926

Dear Reader,

When Your New Favorite Writer began blogging nineteen months ago, his declared purpose was to “cultivate my author platform . . . so that people beyond my family may take an interest in my books when they are published.” 

The blog was an auxiliary to my budding late-life career as a fiction writer. It was supplementary, not central, to my calling as a teller of tales. Therefore I proposed to fill it with ancillary content such as:

• “Ruminations on ‘the writer’s life.’
• “Narratives of past events, sometimes written as fictional vignettes.
• “Mentions of good books recently read.
• “News and chat from my widening circle of fellow writers.
• “Tales of success (or even of well-curated failure!) in the literary lists.
• “Pretty-much-brilliant observations and insights on the passing scene.

and

• “Occasional adumbrations of the Judeo-Christian faith that informs and animates all of these things in my life.” 

Every Tuesday since then, I’ve been approximately hitting one or more of those targets.

But a funny thing happpened on the way to literary lionhood. 

I started to take fiction writing as a serious challenge. The smug conceit that I was just around the corner from stardom wore off in the literary ball mill of submissions and rejections. 

What remained was this: A passion to keep on making up stories and pitching them until somebody noticed.

I had completed two novels not yet published in book form. I vowed to take Ray Bradbury’s advice and write a short story every week for a year. (His explanation was: “If you can write one short story a week—it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones.”)

And, Gentle Reader, since you’ve been with me these nineteen months, it seemed churlish not to let you in on the fun part. 

So I’ve been posting those stories, in first draft form, for your comments and suggestions. I am serious. Help me out. Let me know what you find appealing and what you find boring or distracting or otherwise off-putting in these stories. We’ll have this fun together.

You will find the stories by clicking this link or by selecting Short Stories under the Fiction in Progress tab at the top of my website, https://LarryFSommers.com. 

Which brings us to the next news item: The website has been re-jiggered.

To make it easy to navigate straight to the short stories, or straight to the ancillary content if you prefer, I’ve set up separate tabs on the top menu for Fiction in Progress and Commentary. If you want to see both, mixed in together, just click on Blog.

As an added bonus, I rearranged the other tabs so that the Home Page now introduces what this site is all about, and the About Page has bio notes on me, Your New Favorite Writer.

So now you know. Happy surfing!

And don’t forget to leave comments.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

(History is not what you thought!)