Edgar of all trades

I love reading and especially writing. Its one of the reasons I maintain two blogs. its also the reason I follow @ChiTribBooks and as many authors and literary people, like @amyguth, @ann_aguirre, @Jamie1km, etc. and aspiring (or accomplished) writers/bloggers like @zombie_joe and @worldofhiglet and @kiala. I can go on and on.

Amy Guth, while writing for ChicagoNow’s Chicago Subtext, had some badass mini flash fiction contests. She would provide an image of some random thing and have us write a ‘complete story” in 100 words or less. I wrote about it on this blog in September.

As I said, I love writing, and as part of the Year of the Edgar movement, I need to push myself to write more. I could just sit down and do it, but I want to try something similar to the flash fiction.

I want you to help me write some short stories. Either email the requests to edgar at edgargarcia dot com or post them as a comment below. I will not be limiting myself to 100 words or less, although I will make them as brief as possible. Your rules. i only ask that you not give me inappropriate guidelines. I reserve the right to reject a request, also, whatever is given to me is assumed to be given to me as being my property for legal purposes, although just contact me if you wish to discuss legalities and such, I’m just a tiny blog anyway.

The point is, give me as much information about what you want me to write about as you want. A character, a word, an item, a genre, use certain word or words or items in a story… its endless. Again, don’t limit me to a certain number of words (like “it has to be under 100 words”). I will try to write the stories as small as I can. I may even get creative and mix multiple ideas into one story. I’d like to get at least five different sources more is better (sources means people, you can send me as many separate ideas as you like but I want a bunch of people to participate so help spread the word.) My plan is to see if I have enough story ideas that I can then post some sort of vote and see which one people want me to elaborate more on. This way you guys get more story/content for free. I may even incorporate more “throw ideas at me” to further the story.

Help me out. I want to write for you guys. What will I write? Its up to you!

Edgar

http://atleahjones.com

Here I go again, opening my not-so-big-mouth and getting myself more work. I am one of a trio of people currently working on the next Twitter-inspired social media experiment.

You heard right, it is a dating site, of sorts. See my Twitter life, as short as it has been, has been very fruitful. I’ve avoided adding people myself, and most of them have for one reason or another added me first. Leah Jones is one such woman.

Leah is a blogger, and on Twitter and other social sites. Recently, one of her tweets was about her friend, trying to set him up on a date. Ten days ago… She then continued by reinforcing how serious she was that same night. A few days later, she updated us on her successful possible matchmaking. This is where I come in. I engage her by asking how much her matchmaking services are, then mention how a leahjonesdating site would solve all those problems. This quickly grew to what it almost is now. I say that because it is and will be a work in progress for a while.

Currently, you can see a splash logo/page here http://atleahjones.com that Ezra Butler, from Jerusalem, one of Leah’s many friends/contacts, created. He is working on the design. I am working on the guts/tech, and Leah will be the pretty face to this project. She will also take the biggest role by seriously interviewing her friends first, then slowly adding others, by blogging about them and giving them her seal of approval. Leah will be featuring people from all walks of life, it won’t be a set type, I mean, I will probably definitely be showcased. We’re working out the kinks on how to handle communications, but as I said, work in progress.

Leah’s recent blog post is about this and is called Building a Better Dating Site. I think giving it the personal touch Leah will be giving, is the secret to building a better dating site. I’ve had to learn how to set up an image map to link our Twitter accounts on the existing splash page. I also had to figure out how to set up an email relay to work with the blog. Since I am hosting it. I may end up moving it though.