I very recently – as in, an hour ago – signed up to use a new author platform called Curious Fictions. Like I said, I’m very, VERY new to it, so I’m still figuring out exactly how it works, but as I understand it so far, published authors can list short stories, excerpts from longer works, and post other information with the aim of getting their work out to a wider audience and as another potential revenue stream. Readers can follow their favourite authors to get updates when they post new material, or pay a small subscription fee to access subscriber-only content. So I guess that makes it a little like Patreon, a little like a blog, a little like Wattpad, and a little like a few other platforms I’ve seen come and go.
Browsing through the list of authors, I noticed a number of familiar names; Jason Franks, Alan Baxter, Sean Williams and Trent Jamieson are just a few of the authors using Curious Fictions whose work I admire. They’re all Australian, by birth, or like the first two (and like me), by residence. But it’s no big surprise that the Aussies would be first in line to give things a go.
The handy Best Practice guide that Curious Fictions provides to authors suggests that you don’t just load up all your reprints all at once – spread them out regular intervals, ideally one post a week. I’ve started with “Ghosts Under Glass”, which was first published in Horror Library Vol. 4. As with many of my stories, the seed for this came from a dream about a very angry spectre on one side of a pane of glass, and a young woman on the other. I have no idea what my subconscious was trying to tell me, unless it was, “Hey! This would make an interesting premise for a short story!”
Anyway…if you’re interested in reading some of my work, pop on over to Curious Fictions and follow me. And while you’re there, have a little poke around. You never know what you might find.
