D. Fritz: Blog

I had an editor review my most-recent effort, Reflections of a Convalescent, and have reposted all of the chapters in the story.

From the updated description:

Jimmy is an 84 year old in excellent health that has never spent a day in the hospital until the carelessness of a neighbor's kid causes an accident. He learns that the exercises done in rehabilitation can be more than just physical as he forms a special bond with his rehab therapist. The reposted chapters include a huge editorial update. It's the same story, but now it is much cleaner and tighter.

Thanks much to all that have read the story! If others read it and have comments, they are always appreciated.

-DF

Completed and published my latest story - A Small World - a few days ago. The download and vote totals of this one story exceed the sum of all my previously published stories! The totals do not necessarily match other stories on the site, but for me they were nice bump and much appreciated.

As such, I wanted to write a quick blog note to those that have downloaded and read this tale: Thank you!

Also, for those that have sent notes - of encouragement, pointing out typos, asking questions - a very sincere thanks for not only reading, but taking the time to send feedback.

I published my first story here in mid-October and just recently published #4 and #5. I really tried to come up five unique stories to get started as this is my first outlet of any kind of writing. After getting the stories online I have been a little surprised at the voting, the number of downloads, and even more so, at the feedback that has not been received.

I read somewhere that the voting can fluctuate wildly and to be taken with a grain of salt. That is, a story can be well-written and executed, but if it doesn't contain the elements that the reader wants or expects it won't get a good score.

Correlated to the number of votes seems to be the number of downloads. Once a story is published it quickly falls down the "recent" list on the homepage and is doesn't have any exposure. I published one of my five stories a chapter at at and that kept pinging the story back to the top of the list with each new addition.

One of the less-than-10 comments I received was a question about the ending of a story. The reader asked a specific question about the direction, and if the story was going to veer that way he would cut his losses and stop reading. If not, he was enjoying the story and would wait for the ending to published. (It did not go the queried direction and the reader presumably continued to read the story.)

The rest of the comments have been very benign. A few have been "Thanks, I enjoyed it." (Which, don't get me wrong, are great to hear!) And a couple have been sent to call out typos in the story text. And then a few have been sent behind the safety of Internet anonymity. One basically asked me if I was really that stupid to end a story a certain way.

If you're still reading thanks for your patience at my rant! I guess the above should be expected in this kind of forum.

-DF

I completed and published the final chapter to The Coupon Book earlier today!

I have heard authors talk about making emotional connections with the characters in their books. Some of these attachments lead to the author shedding tears when they write a character's death scene. While I may not be quite that connected to the group in The Coupon Book, I really enjoyed writing the story.

When I initially outlined the characters I created a lot of background info that didn't make it into what was eventually published. I think it would be easy to continue with several new, independent stories with that cast of characters, but I've got another story partially completed and hope to finish it before returning to the world started in The Coupon Book.

For those that have read and provided feedback, Thank You! It is much appreciated. If you have read, or will read, the story and have a comment please don't hesitate to send me a note.

I hope you enjoy reading The Coupon Book as much as I did writing it.

For my sophomore effort I wrote two short stories (~2500 words each) that follow one another. After getting Two Perspectives done (~40K words), it seemed pretty easy to write these two very short, non-sex, stories. My third effort is blocked out around 8-10 chapters so it will likely be closer to the Two Perspectives.

Many thanks to those that have sent feedback. I really appreciate it.

-DF