365 tomorrows

Hey Rube , by Steve Smith is now up on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, the official podcast of 365tomorrows.
Hey Rube was written, read and produced by Steve Smith.

Listen to it Here.

Sam Spade , by TJMoore is now up on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, the official podcast of 365tomorrows.
Sam Spade was written by TJMoore, and read by Steve Smith.

Listen to it Here.

The third year of 365tomorrows is now under way, and with it comes new featured writers. For the month of September we’re proud to present the writing of Todd Keisling, author of the novel A Life Transparent.

Todd’s work is fantastic, and we’re very pleased that he’s written eight new stories for us to share with you over the course of the month. We’re sure you’ll enjoy them as much as we do, but drop by the forums and let us know what you think.

Odds are if you’re reading this message, then you’re already subscribed to our RSS feed. If you’re a Mac user, and running OSX 10.4 or later, then you can download our Widget from Apple and view the most recent 10 stories from Dashboard too. There’s a slider on the back that lets you manage how much of the story you want to see, from the entire story down to just the Title and Author, with all stories linked back to the site.

Drop by the Apple site, show them how much you care and let’s see how popular we can make the 365Widget on their list.

As of yesterday, we’ve wrapped up yet another year of 365tomorrows (for a grand total of 730 tomorrows, I believe, but as a liberal arts major, I might be wrong) and today launches us into our third. We’ve got a number of changes to announce, from the new site itself (design provided by Steve Van Rooy and produced by Steve Smith with 3D graphics provided by Moebius) to shifts in staff, and we’re certain we have an exciting year ahead of us.

J Loseth will be leaving us this year, but we’re bringing on three regular contributors as staff members: Sam Clough, Duncan Shields, and Patricia Stewart. All three have made excellent contributions to the site so far, and we’re looking forward to seeing them more often. You can usually find our new staff members (and some of us old ones) milling around the forum, so pop over to get to know them.

As it did last year, 365 runs on both staff writing and user submissions, so please, keep those stories coming! We’ve upped the word count to 600 or fewer words, but while we used to play fast and loose with the limitation, it’s now a firm rule.

We’re all really excited about this coming year, and we’ve got a few more surprises in the works. Thanks to you, we’re the most popular daily flash fiction site on the web. It means a lot to us to see how many people visit the site and to hear feedback from our readers in the forums (hint, hint), and without you, we might not have survived as long as we have. So thank you, from the bottom of our writerly hearts, and we hope you’ll enjoy what we have in store.

-Kathy

The Sea and the Skylark by Sam Clough aka “Hrekka” has been included in the July 15th release of Soundzine. This was first released on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, and follows Kathy Kachelries story A Lighthouse Through Time which was included in the premier release of Soundzine after also first appearing on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast.

Checkout Soundzine for other great prose and poetry reading.

This month, we’re proud to feature another long-term contributer: Patricia Stewart. Patricia’s background in physics makes her an excellent source of hard science fiction, but her audience isn’t limited to scientists: anyone can enjoy the human touch in her stories. You can expect her to make several appearances in June, in addition to our usual blend of staff writers and submission contributions. We hope you enjoy what you see.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Staff Writer Steve and Möebius, of www.team-dystopia.com, we now have a masthead and footer that far surpass the text-and-NASA-culled-stock-photo images we’ve been using for the last two years. If you haven’t already, refresh your browser to check out the wonder.

Möebius posted this excellent render of our (NASA’s?) satellite dish to the forums, and we immediately fell in love with it. Luckily, he allowed us to use it for the overall site design. We love getting feedback and contributions from you guys, so please, keep them coming! You all know where to submit.

There’ll be another newspost about this in a couple months, but we’re closing in on two years here at 365, and we’re constantly amazed and warmed by the support we’ve received from you loyal readers out there on those vast, pipe-channeled internets. Thanks, guys. We’re looking forward to even more.

A new month brings a new featured writer. This month we proudly present the work of Mur Lafferty, a freelance writer and podcaster. Mur literally wrote the book on podcasting, co-authoring ‘Tricks of the Podcasting Masters’ with Rob Walch, and is the author of the podiobooks ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’.

Mur brings a wonderful whimsical charm to her stories, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Ken Newquist at SciFi.com has a very nice review of 365tomorrows, having selected us as his Site of the Week .

Continuing with our monthly feature, we’ve got three top notch writers to spotlight starting this month and continuing through May and June.

You’ll remember we began featuring writers last October with Duncan Shields. His work was so well received, and he’s just so damn prolific, we decided to feature him again in April. I’m sure you’ll love his new work just as much as we do. Drop by the forums and share your thoughts with him and all the other writers.

As mentioned last month, there are very cool printable flyers available in the forums that you can print and post wherever you think you might catch the attention of future fans of 365tomorrows. We’d love to see your mugshot next to a 365 poster in your home town. Print them out, post them and take a picture for the forums.

Many thanks to Kelly Leaman for designing these for us.

We let a couple of months slip by without a featured writer, but our featured writer for the month of February is here to make up for that: Sam Clough, aka Hrekka. He’s got plenty of new tomorrows to bring you this time around, along with our usual mix of submissions and staff work. We began featuring writers last October with Duncan Shields, and we intend to continue throughout the year.

We’ve got a few other projects in the works, including some promotional flyers that should find their way onto our news page within a couple of weeks, so stick around!

You may have noticed by now that the 365tomorrows site is sporting a fresh coat of paint. We wanted to improve on the original design, while at the same time staying true to it. The result is hopefully a subtle but noticeable improvement.

We obviously hope you approve, and hope you’ll let us know what you think.

So far, this has been an exciting year for 365. The submissions are working out great, and we’ve been really impressed with the quality. Judging from your feedback, you’ve been enjoying them too. However, we’ve had a few emails asking about the status of particular submissions after they’ve been rejected or accepted, and we’ve traced this problem to the fact that 365tomorrows emails are being filtered as spam by a few popular email services. When you submit, please make sure that 365tomorrows.com is on your list of approved senders!

We’ve pleased to announce a new forum overlord: Freeman. If you haven’t already checked out our forums, head over to discuss the day’s story (and other exciting topics!) with other 365 readers. Most of the staff and a few popular non-staff writers follow the boards to answer questions and participate in the fun. We’d love to have you join us.

We’ve got another exciting announcement: beginning this month, we’ll be occasionally featuring a writer pulled from our well of submissions. We’re kicking this off with Duncan Shields, whom you’ll be seeing a lot of in October.

It seems like it’s been forever since I stopped at an abnormally long traffic light in my hometown and wondered why the internet has daily blogs, daily webcomics, and no daily fiction. 365 days after our initial launch, it’s safe to say that’s no longer true. 365tomorrows is the first daily flash-fiction site to complete an entire year, and although we’ve given you hundreds of stories, there are thousands more waiting to be told. Some will be ours, some will be yours, but you will never go without your daily fix.

We are, however, making a few changes.

In year two, Steve Smith will be joining the 365tomorrows staff as a contributing writer. Steve’s a fantastic wordsmith and a beacon of ideas, so we’re certain that you’ll love his work as much as we do. He’ll be replacing Jared Axelrod, who’s leaving to pursue his own projects. The rest of us (J Loseth, JR Blackwell, B York, and myself) are sticking around, though you’ll be seeing less of our work as we use submission content to introduce you new writers.

In case you missed our newspost about submissions, you can find all the information you’ll need through the “submit” button on the navbar above. We’re still accepting them, so hurry up and write!

We’ve had an excellent but challenging year, and I’m constantly astounded by the amount of audience support we’ve received. It hasn’t always been easy (wardriving at midnight during power outages, typing stories into cellphones) but it’s been fun, and we’re ready to go another round.

The 365 Tomorrows Store has undergone a complete makeover and a heart transplant, switching providers in order to bring you more wonderful and varied offerings. There are shirts of all styles sporting the 365 Tomorrows banner art, as well as coffee mugs, postage stamps, carry bags and more. The store also has had a cosmetic facelift, and is bolted nicely into place, allowing you to shop without ever leaving the warm comfort of 365.

Check out the new store, and let us know what you think.

One of the biggest questions we’ve gotten in the last few months is this: what’s going to happen to 365tomorrows on July 31st?

To be honest, for a long time, we weren’t sure. When I started this project, I had no idea that it would become so huge, and I’m really grateful to all of you for helping us along the way. We’ve been featured on a ton of sites and translated into a half-dozen languages, and almost all of this has come from word-of-mouth rather than self-promotion. The forums have been hopping (check them out if you haven’t!) and it’s pretty obvious to me that we have one of the most supportive and enthusiastic fan bases on the internet.

Which is why we’re opening our pages to you.

Beginning on August 1st, 2006, 365 will rely heavily on reader submissions. There will still be staff stories, of course, but in the next year, we’re depending on you guys for most of our content. So, it’s time to commit those flash-fiction ideas to paper (if you haven’t already) and toss them our way! You can find the link to our guidelines and submission form at the top of the page.

We’re really looking forward to hearing from you guys, and making this into all of our tomorrows.

-kathy

Greetings Everyone! J.R. Blackwell, here, reporting from 365 Tomorrows Central. I am writing to tell you that Jared Axelrod and I have been invited to attend Balticon 40, which takes place this weekend.

The great folks at Balticon have asked us to talk about Podcasting, specifically, about our podcasts, Voices of Tomorrow , the official 365 Tomorrows Podcast where you can listen to audio versions of some of the stories from the site, and The Voice of Free Planetx .

It’s really an honor to be invited to Balticon 40, especially with the fantastic guests they have on the program this year. If you’re interested in attending, you should check out their website at: http://www.balticon.org/

Tonight we are driving down to Baltimore with free swag which we will be giving out to anybody who is brave enough to introduce themselves to us.

I hope to see you there!

This post is about Steve.

Who is Steve, you might ask? Well, quite simply, Steve is awesome. I could regale you with tales of the intrepid Canuck that is Steve, but instead, I’ll let the changes to the site speak for themselves. The searchable archive is my favorite modification, but you should check out the new writer’s page and follow the new overhead links to our podcast and the 365tomorrows store.

Steve’s been following the site since our boingboinging in September, and he’s one of our most active forumites. So, pop into the forum and thank him for the work he’s done for us, or, better yet, head over to his business website and hire him to work on your site!

You can find Steve’s company, Align Software Inc., at alignsoft.com.

In the February, 2006 issue of Popular Science Magazine, on page 88, in the midst of the “FYI” section, you will find the question “What’s worth reading on the Web?” The answer is as follows:

Imagine a web site that posts a brand-new, original piece of fiction every day, a story short enough to read without hitting a “next” button. This all-sci-fi site launched last August and has been posting new prose daily. Read stories about humanoid robots, alien love affairs, and time travel back to the 20th century at 365tomorrows.com.

Every one of us here at 365 was floored that the leading periodical of the technology that builds the future we write about gave us their recomendation. Thank you, Popular Science. And welcome, folks from Popular Science. You’ll find a good home here among our intelligent and devoted readership.

Voices of Tomorrow, the 365 Tomorrows Podcast has gone live.

It is available for direct download here: http://voicesoftomorrow.libsyn.com/

If you have iTunes, you should be able to find it in your Podcast directory.

Thanks to everyone who submitted story suggestions for the Podcast; each one of them will be recorded and broadcast in Voices of Tomorrow.

This first Podcast is “Keeping Safe” a story written by Kathy Kachelries which first appeared on August 2nd, on the 365 Tomorrows site. It was the second story to go up on the site, and it was given first place on the Podcast in honor of the fact that it was Kathy who thought of the idea of giving out free tomorrows, and it is Kathy who still inspires us.

I plan to release a new Podcast each week for fifty two weeks. Barring technical difficulties, you should have a new piece of audio fiction waiting for you each Monday for a year.

An ambitious project, maybe, but we appear to be developing a reputation for doing big things.

I hope you enjoy Voices of Tomorrow.
-J.R.

Starting January 1st, 2006 365 Tomorrows will be launching it’s Podcast; Voices of Tomorrow, which will feature some of the stories of 365 Tomorrows.

A Podcast is Internet Radio. It’s available for download whenever you want to get it, and, like an RSS feed, you can subscribe to a Podcast for automatic updates. Voices of Tomorrow will release at least one story every week (perhaps more, depending on time, inspiration and demand) for 52 weeks.

This is where you come in. I would like to know your favorite stories on 365 Tomorrows. Would you like to hear “The Nine Billion Names of God” spoken aloud, or do you have your heart set on hearing “Real Girls”? Do you have a list of J.Loseth stories you think need to be broadcast? Does the work of B. York speak to you? Do you think it needs to speak to others?

Let me know what you like, and what you want to hear. Drop a comment on our forums, e-mail me at jrblackwell@365tomorrows.com or, if you are reading this through the LJ feed, post a comment there.

I look forward to hearing from you.

-J.R.

As you are probably aware, the writers of 365 Tomorrows has been invited to be guests at PhilCon 2005. PhilCon will be held on December 9th to 11th, at theMarriot Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. Here’s a list of the panels we shall be speaking at:

• Fri 9:00 PM in 306—Science Fiction about “Touchy” Subjects (146)
Why is science fiction good at talking about things people don’t want to address?
Myke Cole (mod), Stephanie Burke, Camille Anthony, J.R. Blackwell, Tony Ruggiero

• Fri 10:00 PM in 306—The Impact of Online Magazines on the Genre (143)
Save our trees!
Rob Balder (mod), J.R. Blackwell, Robert Jeschonek, James Patrick Kelly, Mike Pederson, Alyce Wilson

• Sat 10:00 AM in Liberty C—Science Fiction: Gen X (179)
Does the 80s generation have a different idea of what good science fiction is?
Tony Ruggiero (mod), Stephanie Burke, Mike Pederson, Jared Axelrod, Joe McCabe

• Sat 2:00 PM in 303—Writing for an Online Audience (283)
In today’s high tech world a writers audience may just as easily be reading their work on a monitor as a page. Four writers and a publisher who have worked on online publishing talk about their experience writing for an online audience, managing forums, publicity, writing for a deadline, merchandising and nurturing ones fanbase.
J.R. Blackwell (mod), J. Loseth, Nick Popio, Brian York, Jared Axelrod

• Sat 5:00 PM in 413—In Their Own Words (100)
Many of these panels will dwell on the look or content of anime. But what about the sound? Here’s your chance to get to know what happens in the recording booths from the mouths of the professionals themselves.
Amy Howard-Wilson (mod), J. Loseth, Kristen Nelson

• Sun 1:00 PM in Salon G—Flash Fiction (284)
The cutting edge of fiction, Flash Fiction, has the heart of a short story and the soul of a poem. The writers of 365 tomorrows, a website that deal exclusively in flash fiction discuss the differences between writing a short story and a short, short, short story. How much story there possibly be in 500 words? The answer may surprise you!
J.R. Blackwell (mod), J. Loseth, Jared Axelrod, Nick Popio, Brian York

The writers of 365 Tomorrows are honored to announce that we have been invited to be guests at PhilCon 2005. PhilCon will be held on December 9th to 11th, at the Marriot Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. Jared Axelrod, J, Loseth , B. York and I will be hosting two panels, ‘Publishing for an Online Audience’ and ‘Flash Fiction’.

To all those who attend our panels, or who spot us in the hallways, we will be giving out a free CD of 15 recorded stories from 365 Tomorrows, along with exclusive work that will not be on the 365 Tomorrows Podcast, which we plan to launch in December.

If you want the CD but won’t be attending PhilCon, we will eventually sell the CD on the website and in the bookstore, Bindlestiff Books, which has just opened in West Philadelphia.

PhilCon is a fantastic convention, lots of great panels, a large dealer and art room, and, most importantly, a fantastic group of people who run the convention. We look forward to meeting you there!

It’s official. 365 Tomorrows has gone global. With translations of our work in Spanish Spanish, Korean, and now German, we are attracting fans from all over the world. Evidence of this Globalization can be found on our Frappr Map, which shows where our fans are located. Show your support and link yourself on our map!

In celebration of our global takeover, the 365 Tomorrows Store has undergone a total makeover. Prices are down and selection is up. If you enjoy the stories and want to help support the site, please visit our store and check out our selection of shirts.

There are two big announcements coming soon, I can’t speak about them yet, but wonderful things are on the way, happenings that indicate the authors may soon be seen in the flesh, and adventures in the world of sound. Stay tuned.

There were some problems with the PayPal donate button we posted yesterday, but we’ve got it fixed now. Please help 365 stay alive by clicking the button below to donate. We really need your contributions to keep bringing 365 tomorrows to you every day. Remember, Kathy will send you a postcard if you donate more than $5. Don’t forget to email her your mailing address if you do so.

Thank you to everyone who enjoys the site enough to help us keep doing what we do best.

Greetings, denizens of cyberspace!

We are officially multi-lingual! Portions of 365 are currently being translated into Korean and Spanish. If you’d like to translate into another language, please, drop me a line with a link to your site and it’ll show up in our next newspost. We enjoy imposing ourself on the rest of the world…especially me, since, as a TEFL teacher, I’m surrounded by people who I can’t pimp the site to because of language conflicts.

Also, we now offer the convenient, enticing, and morally compelling option to donate to 365. Yes, asking for donations is slightly skeevy, but the fact is we put a lot of money (over $600) into starting up the site, and I’d really like to pay off at least some of the debt. Of course, the stories will keep coming no matter what, but we’d definitely appreciate your help. In fact, I’ll send you a postcard from China and a nifty business card if you donate $5 or more (send your address to moi).

Because I’m asking you for money, I feel ethically obligated to inform you that 365 has been approved for Google’s AdSense program, so in a few days, you’ll see that unobtrusive sidebar on our main page. We will, however, never use tacky banners or anything that detracts from the nice layout that Matt was kind enough to create for us at a price slightly lower than peanuts. AdSense has a decent setup which, as I said, is rather subtle and targeted to the audience…not to mention that we get a decent cut every time you click on a link which will further help us get out of that aforementioned debt.

On the subject of banners, here’s a nice piece I’ve cooked up for you if you’d like to pimp our site. J Loseth was kind enough to write this c/p-able code:

Also, if you haven’t already, feel free to participate in our forums. We’ve got a nice group going there, and they’ve been posting some excellent fanfic recently.

That’s all for today. Thanks, loyal readers, for following our site. This project has been far more successful than I anticipated, and I really appreciate everything you guys have done for us.

I’d like to thank the students in Professor Connelly’s class at Camden County Community College in New Jersey for allowing me the pleasure of guest lecturing there this afternoon. This isn’t the sort of thing I normally do, but I appreciate it all the same. It’s the first time I’ve given live readings for any of my 365 work, and I hope that the attendees enjoyed it as much as I did. Welcome to any CCCC students who are just discovering this site.

That being said, if any 365 readers out there attend or instruct in an academic venue (or a non-academic venue, for that matter) where guest lectures are common, let us know if you want to try to arrange something. You can email me or get in touch with any of the other 365 writers via the email links in our bios. We’ll probably be far more able to accomodate requests in the greater Philadelphia and New York City area at this time, but we’re willing to listen to other proposals as well.

In other news, it has come to my attention that 365 tomorrows is currently generating traffic of approximately 20,000 hits each day, 5,000 of which are unique. That’s very exciting for all of us, and we’d like to thank everyone who reads 365 every day. We’ve also got nearly a hundred registered users on our forums, some of whom have been very active, and a lot of great discussion goes on there every day. Check it out if you haven’t yet had the chance.

Lastly, I’ve heard through the grapevine that we are being translated into Korean. I don’t have details on this yet, but keep a lookout for the full story.

The response to the site has been overwhelmingly positive, but one thing we’ve heard repeatedly is that there is no way to contact us, the authors. There’s been some conversation on the Livejournal RSS feed, but nowhere near the interaction that we wanted, or that readers to the site have been asking for.

Now there is.

Ladies, Gentleman, and Gender-Neutrals, I give you the 365 TOMORROWS FORUM

Log in and say hello. We’ll be there.

J. Loseth here, and I’d like to extend a very warm welcome to the new readers who have joined us through boingboing.net. We were linked there yesterday, and a little bird told me that it was the work of webcomic artist David Williams, whose comic you can find over at raincannon.com. Thanks David and hello to everyone out there who found us through boingboing!

Now that I have your attention, allow me to draw it to a new section of our site: the affiliates page. This is your opportunity to peer into the minds behind 365 by checking out the books that inspired us, not only in this project, but to become writers at all. We’ve each picked a number of works that influenced us, so if you’re looking for more to read than the site archives can offer you, head on over to the affiliates page for a book recommendation. You can find the link in the navigation bar at the top of the site, or you can use the handy link in this post. I’ll repeat it here for your benefit, because I’m such a nice guy.

Also on the affiliates page, you’ll find the link to the 365 store. If you love 365 and want to tell the world, this is the way to do it. The designs feature the site name and the satellite logo on various T-shirts, tanks, and jackets. Wondering how you can help 365 grow? This is the way.

Speaking of growth, I have it on very good authority that a new section of the site will be unveiled sometime this week. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, but stay tuned for more information.

J. out.

Dearest Reader,

J.R. Blackwell here, writing to you with a few items of interest:

One month down, eleven more to go. August was an amazing month here at 365 Tomorrows; I have found links to our site in German, Korean and Spanish. Thank you to everyone who has shown us support in this first month of tomorrows. Coming in September you will have stories about the conquest, the oldest man in the world, and the nine billion names of God.

B. York, Jared Axelrod and myself will all be making an appearance at Dragon*Con this weekend. If you see us, give us a shout and let us know what you think about the project.

We’ll have a few surprises coming on the site in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.