The story of a story

When J. Lee Porter and I were writing CRYPTO SHRUGGED and researching the Bitpat series, we made a trip to Colombia -- the scene of some of the action. The stories we envisioned were about the global ramifications of cryptocurrency, in big and small ways.

We managed to spend time in both Cartagena and Medellin. Both were great, but in completely different ways.

In Cartagena, we managed to rent a place in the old district, just walking distance from the Walled City. We went there several times, and an idea for a short story, actually based on some experiences Jeff had in Mexico, started to bloom. In Medellin, we talked about how it would develop. At the end of the trip I was flying back through Cartagena, so I got a room in the walled city and revisited some of the places that inspired us.

The short story, INVISIBLE FORTUNE, worked well enough that we made it into an audiobook, narrated by John Witstijn, who did an incredible job.

To let people know it exists, I took the photos and videos I'd taken on the trip and combined them with John's intro to the book and some of my music, to create a teaser that's also something of a travelogue -- an introduction to Cartagena. I hope you enjoy it.

Medellin, Colombia

I've talked about the research we did in Colombia and shared some photos, but I might not have said much about how impressive Medellin is. It's a clean and incredibly modern city. The traffic sucks, but they have an efficient metro system and plentiful taxis that aren't expensive.

Much of the time we stayed a section of the city called Laureles that was a wonderfully walkable part of town. There were shops of all sorts, from small tiendas to large malls -- all within a few blocks of us. Better yet, we frequented a delightful Cuban restaurant that offered five-year old Cuban rum.

The hotel we stayed in had a nice breakfast area in the picture below. Often I would set up my computer in the morning and work on our short story INVISIBLE FORTUNE that came out of the days we spent in Cartagena. My coauthor J. Lee Porter and I would pass the drafts back and forth until we were happy with them.

As both of us tend to be early risers, we could often have a story conference over breakfast. Get the work stuff out of the way and explore. If you aren't a writer, chatting about the plot of a crime story might not seem the stuff of breakfast conversation, but it worked well for us. And we needed to make sure that the story fits in, in terms of tone and style, with the Bitpats novel series we are writing. The first book, CRYPTO SHRUGGED is coming in May and you can read about the series at Nomadic Giant.

As you can see, this neighborhood is tree-lined and pleasant. Every morning the shopkeepers were out sweeping the sidewalks and keeping everything nice. And given that this picture was taken in January, you can see that it's a perfect place for escaping snow and ice. We understand that the temperature doesn't vary that much year round.

Medellin is above 5000 feet and in a valley surrounded by mountains. Rather idyllic. We will certainly be tempted to return there.

Italian Translation

I've been working with +Babelcube to get a number of my stories into other languages and it's a fascinating experience. The most recent effort is getting my short story A MEXICAN DIVORCE into Italian. The translator +Maria Antonietta Ricagno did a wonderful job (so I'm told) and it is now available through Scribd and Page Foundry. It's coming to Amazon and a variety of other outlets soon. Including Barnes & Noble, iTunes and Google Play.

For those of you whose Italian isn't so hot, the story is also available in Spanish (translated by Pablo Crescentini and available through Barnes & Noble and iTunes) and in Portugues (translated by Eduardo Paiva and available through Barnes & Noble and iTunes).

New audio book

I'm excited that my short story, Imitating Art, is now out as an audio book on Amazon and Audible for only $3.95. Joe Farinacci did a lovely job with it.

This is a story of the blur between art and life, crime and everything else, for a backpacker in SE Asia. A story of guesthouses, bar girls, and obscure personal histories.

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Book reviews, sales and other confusions

Float Street Press has been experimenting with things, trying to figure out how to reach readers. We'd like our books to be read (seeing as that is the point of publishing them) and especially find readers who like a particular author. Javaid Qazi writes strange and wonderful short stories, but his two collections (UNLIKELY STORIES and THE JEWELED WEB) have not sent tremors through the publishing world. Still, when UNLIKELY STORIES came out, it got good reviews. Someone giving it a five star review wrote:

 

Excellent stories from Pakistan to Silicon Valley 

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Javaid Qazi's first collection of short stories is notable both for their insightful nature and amazing variety. A country-western barfly, Silicon Valley office workers, a doctor and his family in Pakistan, a lustful maid in Portugal, and a German 'stripteuse' populate these tales. Throughout the world Qazi finds interesting people in interesting dilemmas. His language is as original as it too is varied. A highly recommended first book by an upcoming writer who measures up internationally.

 

 That was lovely, but it doesn't seem that it encouraged shoppers to avail themselves of the book.

 

Okay, I get it that short story collections, especially when they lurk in a strange limbo between experimental and mainstream fiction, sometimes encroaching on one, sometimes the other, isn't the easiest sell. How do you tell people what it is? Our thought was to publish some stories individually and let people know they were from a large collection of such stories.

So we published two stories and made them available at 99cents and used the Kindle free days to let the world know.

 

 Both received an encouraging number of downloads, both free and paid. And one reviewer (the only reviewer) of President Sahib's Blue Period gave it:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wise, metaphorical, entertaining May 16, 2013

By Scrabble Fan

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This short story contains many allegories and metaphors for our age, at the same time containing irony and humor. The writing style reminds me of Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude." 

 

We've seen no reviews for Berlin Danse Macabre yet, but it is a challenging story.

 

Understanding what this anecdotal evidence means is difficult. I don't know what inspires people to write reviews, or how other people relate to reviews. I take them along with salt tablets myself, as single grains are usually inadequate, but the reviews of Javaid's books suggest that they struck a lovely chord with some readers.Now we are hoping that the interest this generated is enough to get readers to go for the collections. We could publish all of the stories individually and we will if that is what readers prefer. Given that the least we can charge for a story is 99 cents and the collection of 11 stories in UNLIKELY STORIES is $3.99 and THE JEWELED WEB has 18 for $4,99, I am not sure why readers would prefer single stories, but I know that I am not a typical reader. (We have both in paperback as well, for those who are not addicted to ereaders and like the touch and feel of books.)

It's a fun experiment and the results are sketchy. If you have any thoughts on the idea or value of individual stories versus collections, or how to let people taste a collection in another way, I'd love to hear them.