What would happen if I were to write a new story week by week, and share it with my most important audience (you!) like a television series? I’d set the posts to publish on a regular schedule, say Wednesday mornings, so you can set your RSS feeds to deliver 15 minutes of fun fiction on Hump Day. I’ll keep it to short chunks, say 1000 to 1500 words, so people can take a good bite, and then get on to reading the Times, or whatever.

Another idea: if you are a fiction writer, how would you feel about entering a short story writing contest, through RomanSturgis.com? No entry fee and there would be cash prizes in the several hundred dollars range. Previously published fiction would be considered, assuming you still have the rights to it. Winners would be posted on RomanSturgis.com.

This would be an experiment in renting properties, social networking amongst fiction writers, and building mutual readership through the sharing of fans. The biggest problem I’m facing in the development of this project is how to go about the judging.

One way might be for me to prepare the submissions with anonymous covers for the judge(s). This would obviously eliminate me from being a judge, which I don’t know how I feel about yet. It might be a necessary step, as I’d be funding the prizes and I’d want to avoid obvious conflicts of interest/favoritism. I could be a judge if I had a simple, fool proof way of receiving submissions anonymously, and then later contacting the legit author after the selection process.

Stay tuned for the first issue of Between Worlds, a story about a high school senior at The Standish School. SNEAK PEAK!!