Tuesday, April 28, 2009

I've Tweeted My Meat...


I've seen (that is, been followed by) people who are tweeting serial stories...I usually block them as soon as I read their twitter homepages because the stories are boring as shit and they seem to picture themselves as far more artistic than they actually are.

This one, however is a bit different:
“Where is it?” She grasps, fingers scraping. She yanks. It peels. A gallbladder. “Damn.” She reaches back in. _"Will you quit wiggling?"_
It's a sample tweet from one of the editors at Tweet the Meat, a Twitter-based horror e-zine that seeks to publish complete, 140-character-or-fewer horror snippets from its readers. And they even pay a buck per submission via PayPal.

Anyway, the concept sounded interesting enough so I submitted a tweet on Sunday, and it got accepted. As they have first digital rights to it, I can't reproduce it here for you, but I'll let you know when it's up. I don't want to sound like it was a monumentally difficult thing, but I did think about it for at least a couple of days. Trying to complete an action and create enough of an atmosphere to capture the imagination of a reader in 140 characters, while being grammatically correct, was an interesting task. Definitely fun.

I have a PayPal account, but I don't need the dollar. In this case, they will make a donation via PayPal to the charity of your choice in your name. I think that is an excellent idea. I believe I will choose Project Valour-IT, who help "provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries." They can use the dollar way more than I can, and maybe I'll try and do a submission a week to get them more money...

It'll be interesting when they start posting reader-submitted stuff, to see the quality that made the cut. It's definitely more interesting than some wannabe wovelist trying to feed you mediocrity 140 characters at a time.

On other publishing news, my "Monster Byte" was accepted by the Innsmouth Free Press, though it has not been published yet. I hope to see it soon, but I also had planned to make a couple more related ones to round the story out...I should get cracking. I had also wanted to write a piece of short fiction for them; something of a Cthulhu meets Patrick O'Brian in the Oregon territory circa 1820. I should get cracking on that, too. I was also going to set up an invitation only blog to display works in progress for comment. I should get cracking on that, too.

6 comments:

Julie said...

Congratulations!

I've been following Brent Spiner's tweet story for about a week, but it hasn't been doing much for me and I'll probably unfollow soon.

Mary Ellen said...

I have to admit, I've never tweeted. I'm a virgin tweeter. I don't think I would know how to tweet and would need an experienced tweeter to show me how it's done. I didn't know that you could get paid for tweeting, however. Would that make me a prostitute tweeter?

This is all so confusing, think I'll stick to what I know best...which is uh...uh...well, I'm sure there's something.

Randal Graves said...

Would you get cracking already?

Can't wait to read your Innsmouth piece. I should try coming up with something for that, but that means I'd have to come up with something. Any ideas I can steal?

Nunly, I'm convinced you ran the swankiest brothel in the Old West in a former life.

Commander Zaius said...

How do you set up a Pay Pal account for blogs? I've seen a few like with them but never looked into it.

Chef Cthulhu said...

Julie - Thanks. I didn't know he was on Twitter. The "Tweet Authors" I had seen were all considerably less well (read un-) known...

Nunly - I can't top what Randal said...so I'll second it. Just make your first tweet something special.

Randal - yeah, yeah...I'd get cracking but I'm having too much fun wisecracking here.

BB - I've seen them and always wondered "What costs do you have associated with blogging?" especially if they are using a fee domain. It seems like panhandling.

Anonymous said...

let's go veg!