Want to read some quick fiction?
It doesn’t get quicker than what you’ll find at Thaumatrope , the first zine I’ve seen published through Twitter. I’m assuming you know what Twitter is, of course. Social text messaging service where messages are limited to a dumbphone’s text message limit of 140 characters.
And yes, you can deliver complete stories in that amazingly limited amount of space. Earnest Hemingway once famously wrote one in six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” And Wired asked lots of writers for their six-word creations last year. It can be done, and it’s a cool idea.
Thaumatrope bills itself as “a magazine for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror fiction”. So far it features reviews of books and games, intensely short fiction, ongoing tweets from the future, and even an interview with author John Scalzi (“Why?” “There is no why. Causality is for amateurs.”) And the part that amuses the hell out of me is this: they pay for fiction. 5 cents a word, average for the market. Actually they pay a flat $1.20 per accepted story.
I love stuff like this. If you recall I made the cover of The Writer for their feature on shortingly-short fiction. It’s challenging and fun and maddening. So you’ll be seeing my tiny byline there a few times over the next year, until they make me stop.