Instead of Writing, I Publish a Book
A book about a girl with dreams
Now the story can be told. And published!
A few years ago I needed a fresh account on Medium, where I was working as an editor for the ILLUMINATION family of publications. Intended just for reading rather than writing, it was mostly so that I could access writers who blocked my primary account, usually because I called them out for breaking the rules. Like copying someone else’s story and attempting to pass it off as their own.
I called the new account Duncan Klein, after the fictional editor in Patricia Chui’s hilarious story about the slushpile business.
I couldn’t hold back, of course. To give the new account a veneer of credibility, I wrote a story. And another, and a third.
I had fun with Duncan. As AI developed, I used the account to test just how good it was. Not good, to begin with, but always improving in quality. As good as any slushpile full of human writers, for sure.
Those AI stories don’t drag me back to read them again and again but the three stories I wrote about the fictional career of Duncan Klein did. I must have read each one dozens of times over the years.
Funny, mildly sexy, a bit of a mystery in each one, full of atmosphere and fantasy about the supposedly intriguing career of the imaginary editor.
We were talking about wine …
The topic of Australian reds came up in conversation with a few of my fellow workers. “Oh, I wrote a story about that,” I incautiously admitted, thinking about My Best Lunchtime Story Ever.
By the end of that day I’d dug out the stories, run them through Scrivener, packaged them up in Vellum and sent out epubs and PDFs in a limited edition of three.
In the process I read them once more and thought, “Well, why not share them with the world?”
So I added in the third one - a bit of an oddball, that - added a few words of semi-explanation, generated a cover, and sent it off to KDP. Under my own name rather than that of Duncan Klein.
Readers, meet Manuscript Destiny.*
Free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, US$2.99 for everyone else, there are a few pages of ‘Read the preview’ for those - like me - who are wary of spending good money on fiction of unknown merit.
I will add more stories as time goes by. I have two more that are no more than ideas right now. One that clears away a few more wisps of the fog, and another in the same whimsical vein of the first two, where the hapless Duncan has to untangle some tricky situation in the world of publishing.
I’ll likely flesh them out when I run out of ideas or motivation in my main enterprise of writing smutty fiction for my Unclad Author project.
Only an ebook for the time being. Let’s face it, Kindle says it’s 40 pages, so it’s not going to be much of a physical book until I add some more content.
Oh yeah, if you want to review it on Goodreads or Amazon, let me know in the comments and I’ll shoot you a free copy. I can’t make it generally available on the web, even for a nominal fee, because that’s the way Kindle Unlimited works for exclusive content but I can send out review copies.
You’ve paid me the compliment of subscribing to this sparse newsletter, have a freebie!
Britni
*Boldface links are affiliates. I get a few cents for sales made through these links. Cents which would otherwise go straight into the corporate pockets of Amazon rather than my own slightly less bulging finances. Or just google the words in italics.
Interesting and thought provoking article. You make publishing sound. Bet it's not. Would be happy to write a review.