Balbina Wachowiakowa was doing shopping with her husband and son at the veryhypermarket. Their cart was already half-filled, and they only just reached the food section.

“Mom! Mom! Look! Cubicar! Cubicar!” Rafik shouted while looking at a meter-long model of a Formula Zero car with all kinds of bells and whistles, whose three-volume user’s manual fitted nicely into a small 20-liter trunk in the rear of the bolide.

“No Rafcio, we can’t afford it, we still need to buy enough laundry detergent to last us three months, because at our local hypermarket it costs 25 groszy more per package.”

“Mother is right,” father said matter-of-factly.

“OK,” Rafik changed tone from childish to adult, “I take the white-green one and we’re out of here.”

“Rafik. No! We have other things to buy!”

“Mother is right,” father said and suddenly turned with the cart into an isle with home improvement equipment.

“Balbi, look. Ecological multi-drillo-screwdriver!” Felicjan, the father, said suddenly when he saw a promotional kit with a set of “three lifetimes guarantee” drill bits.

“No, Felik.”

“But I must tighten that screw in the cupboard. You know, that in the upper right corner, in our second storage room.”

“Felik. End of discussion. We have expenses. Don’t you remember? Today we’re going to auntie Basia’s birthday party.”

“I remember, but…”

“Mother is right,” Rafik interrupted matter-of-factly.

When they got to register number 221 with their fork-lift cart with a trailer, three hours and 59 minutes had passed since they first entered through the gate of hall number 3.

“Not bad. Only three hours today,” father said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, because mom spent the whole hour picking out a gift for aunt Basia.”

“Not aunt, but auntie,” mother said.

She picked out, in the end, a totally useless 300-piece dinner set. The aunt had already two of them, and she lived alone, after her third husband and seventh live-in boyfriend had left her.

“Is that all?” The cashier asked after scanning all the items, and before Balbina could answer, began to recite from memory:

“And maybe I could interest you in a five-passenger car in an ecological matt color, with seven cushions, four-climate zone AC, engine ready for the installation of an organic propulsion drive, and with twenty additional options in a standard version.”

“Only twenty,” disappointed Rafik asked.

“Thank you, we can’t afford it,” father said matter-of-factly.

“And the trunk? Is it big?” Balbina asked.

“Err, maybe…” the cashier answered and continued with her memorized speech:

“We’re offering a convenient purchase option in installments of 20 złoty a month, or every other month. The available colors are: Bahama spruce, Roman birch doublemat, grassy glamour with the upholstery in either mountain moss, or exotic beach.”

“And the trunk? Big?” Mother asked again to keep up appearances.

“Err… I don’t know.”

“OK, we’ll take. You see, we’ve bought quite a lot today. Grassy glamour, exotic beach, monthly payments.”

“Great, here are the keys and the registration. Insurance in the dashboard compartment. The car is parked in the back on the left. The license plates will activate five minutes after the engine is turned on. Happy driving.”

“Thank you,” Balbina answered and a moment later added:

“Oh yes, I’d like a lighter, please.”

The cashier wrinkled her nose and began to query her computerized register system.

“Lighter, lighter… Unfortunately, we do not carry this product.”

Related posts

• 18.09.2009 -- An Orbital Flight With a Small Surprise [short story]
• 03.01.2010 -- Mobile fiction – what is it and why is it at all?
• 13.11.2009 -- Short Stories Made Cellphone Friendly
• 09.10.2009 -- Dobre opowiadania na piątek, czyli #fridayflash
• 15.09.2009 -- Zany Collection of Tech-absurd Short Stories

"An Impulse Purchase [short story]" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Please read this great guest post about it. His author is a fellow mobile fiction writer – Small Stories.

You can subscribe to Small Stories at Posterous. Please visit also his writing website as well as a collection of pictures made with an iPhone.

Small Stories’ books, all of them, are a fantastic choice for mobile readers. Download them for free from Feedbooks.

It’s true we increasingly live in a mobile world but it seems to be having a more rapid change that I imagined a year or so ago.

Take eBooks for example, everyone is trying to get into or investigate them, changing behaviour, and reading trends.

Google thinks the desktop will be irrelevant in three years – everything will come from the cloud and the Internet browser, through devices like the iPhone or iPad. Apple don’t call themselves a computer company any more. They say they are a mobile devices company.

So the momentum is there.

Publishers know it too and don’t want people to flock over or come to expect cheap ebooks. They want to make the business model profitable, they want to control prices. As a result they’re working hard to get consumers to pay hardback prices for ebooks.

New eBooks will, they hope, sell for a premium and gradually go down in price using a three tier price structure.

To get away with this they will need to pull off the same move the film industry did moving from VHS to DVD … up the price and sell quality and extra features. It was the expensive (at the time DVD) that needed a directors commentary and extras to justify the price hike.

Fine then. If that’s what they want bring on those extra features, interviews, author commentaries, videos, images from the book tour, etc … If I love a book enough that might persuade me.

It already has … The Death of Bunny Munro, by Nick Cave came as an enhanced edition for the iPhone for the same price as a hardback but it was still a bargain.

Why?

Because it came with a free audiobook read out by Nick Cave. It was brilliant, like having him over for the evening to read the thing out to me. It was a great book and a beautifully designed iPhone app.

So it seems people don’t mind paying a little extra than they thought (as Apple knows) so long as we get something of perceived value in return.

Mobile fiction has a fantastically exciting time ahead of it. Starting with the iPhone and more importantly the iPad …

Stay tuned :)

Related posts

• 04.12.2010 -- Smashwords: e-book publishing and distribution made easy [presentation]
• 03.01.2010 -- Mobile fiction – what is it and why is it at all?
• 20.04.2009 -- Password Incorrect – mobile flash fiction
• 16.02.2011 -- Self-Publishing przebojem wchodzi na rynek (oraz co zrobić, żeby był to rynek polski)
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?

"Mobile world: mobile fiction: eBooks" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

What is it?

Mobile fiction is fiction literature written with a mobile reader in mind. Mobile reader is the one who reads mo-books. Mobile reader is a tech-nerd with high level of novelty acceptance. He’s driven by technology and doesn’t want to be stopped. Lives quickly, likes to do many things at once, needs to be plugged in.

One can say: yeah, but Dan Brown is also writing for, as you call him “a mobile reader”. His books are also available in electronic format, you can read them on a Kindle, so why all that fuss?

Every author imagines his readers in situations when they’re “swallowing” his books. Such an image is one of writer’s muses. My muse is definitely not spending 12 hours on a sofa under a heavy blanket (as Brown’s muse could do). My reader is reaching for a book while he’s on the go. 20 minutes in an underground, 7 minutes in a queue. I also imagine that my reader is often switching to Twitter, RSS reader, games or application store on his smartphone. He doesn’t distinguish reading a book from any other kind of reading.

As soon as you realize that, you know you have to adjust your writing. Major directions are:
:. kind write short stories (preferably flash fiction) instead of novels
:. style choose fast narration, rich plot, short chapters, paragraphs, sentences
:. topic choose topics, which could well refer to your audience’s world

Why is it?

For some people this description of a mobile reader can be pretty obvious. The only question is: if that is so obvious why there are only few writers who think it’s worth to talk primarily to the this kind of a reader?

The fact that majority of readers are women which neglect technology doesn’t mean, that every writer has to write women’s literature. On the other side, men which love technology usually don’t pick up books as their favourite way of spending free time. Sounds like mobile fiction is a niche? Not exactly. The habit of reading, thanks to e-book revolution is changing at an accelerated speed. E-books, especially mo-books are available in a couple of clicks. This means that a reader can switch books instantly, depending on his current mood (“I need to relax”) or time devoted (“until my train comes”). This also means that a book can be read in many short chunks, when there’s a moment&feel to do that. A 12-hour sofa heavy read can be scary for a techie and he’ll probably do everything to avoid it. A 15 minute low commitment reading? Why not.

There are millions of iPhone users, who read books using Stanza application. There are millions of eReader owners around the world. 3 million – this was a eReader sales prediction for 2009. Don’t you think all those readers have something more in common than just a fact they have accepted e-books and/or freed themselves from paper book’s smell slavery?

What I do?

I perceive myself as a typical mobile reader. I can read short bursts of text, then I get bored and switch. Actually I started to write short stories, because I didn’t find enough books I could have read.

An intention to write specifically for a mobile reader is opening a brave new world. The writer starts to explore, invent, experiment. Out of three directions mentioned above, two of them are easy and there are many authors who actually write mobile fiction, but they never thought it this way. I’m personally focusing on a third factor: topic. My mobile fiction is all about tech nerd world. Technology is bringing so much frustration to people’s life, that a simple escape from reality (a promise of majority of fiction books) is just not enough.

OK, so what am I doing fo mobile fiction except writing kick-off posts on a blog with a weird title? There’s a bunch of things, and I must admit that even I got surprised that it’s so many:

:. I’ve just published two books, Password Incorrect and Failure Confirmed with stories, available as e-books from a mobile friendly Smashwords site. I call the stories tech-absurd (o yeah, another DIY something). It’s a fiction designed to spot the absurd the technology brings to our lives and make fun out of it
:. everything I write is available for mobile reading. I use blog mobilizing tools and I publish books via mobile friendly services, naming only Smashwords and Feedbooks
:. I run a special Twitter profile – @mobilefiction – where you can read my fiction bits and pieces. Many users connect with Twitter via mobile devices, so it’s a great place to promote mobile reading
:. every Friday I publish a news story from a free edition of Password Incorrect on a mobile blog (Mobile Fiction Stories), which is readable not only by smartphone users, but any cellphone with a web browser. Read more here and here
:. book covers which I design are tailored for a mobile reader – they have to look good on a cellphone screen and are inspired by mobile app style
:. I write on an iPhone. Most of #hashtagstory and #vss are created here, as well as ides for short stories. Mobile writing is a similar experience to mobile reading. There’s something great in it called “catch the moment”
:. I even make music on an iPhone. You can read about it and listen here.

Related posts

• 28.03.2010 -- Mobile world: mobile fiction: eBooks
• 04.12.2010 -- Smashwords: e-book publishing and distribution made easy [presentation]
• 04.04.2010 -- E-books: iPad is a Game Changer No. 2
• 31.03.2010 -- TidyRead brings reading to mobile web
• 20.03.2010 -- Weekly links on mobile e-books & self publishing 20.03.2010

"Mobile fiction – what is it and why is it at all?" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

I’m a mobile freak. As you might know from my Twitter updates being read on your shiny cellphone, a couple of weeks ago I started to publish my stories through a mobilized site.

The project is called Mobile Fiction Stories (click for preview here). Every Friday I’m adding a new story, hoping that some day this would become a nice 5-minute-Friday-cellphone-reading habit. You can easily find the stories on Twitter – they’re tagged #mobilefiction. I tweet each one twice a week, so that you don’t need to spend too much time scrolling back your Twitter stream.

The stories come from my book Password Incorrect, which is free to download from Feedbooks. Obviously, ready for download to mobile devices like eReaders and cellphones.

I went mobile with Mofuse. Really cool thing. Mofused blogs show nice and load really fast on most cellphone models with a browser.

If you haven’t tried to read a piece of fiction on your mobile phone, give it a try right now. Just type mobilefiction.mofuse.mobi or choose one of the other easy options. And if you experience any problems with that – well, that’s what my tech-absurd stories are about.

Related posts

• 28.03.2010 -- Mobile world: mobile fiction: eBooks
• 03.01.2010 -- Mobile fiction – what is it and why is it at all?
• 18.09.2009 -- An Orbital Flight With a Small Surprise [short story]
• 15.09.2009 -- Zany Collection of Tech-absurd Short Stories
• 11.09.2009 -- The Third Attempt to Take the Teddy [short story]

"Short Stories Made Cellphone Friendly" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Jest to jedno z nowszych zjawisk literackich na Twitterze, ale bardzo szybko się przyjęło i zdążyło okrzepnąć. Nie ma co się dziwić – to bardzo skuteczna forma zbiorowej promocji autorów. W przeciwieństwie do innych trendów literackich (również tych, które opisywałem tutaj) #fridayflash ma już, według mnie, charakter nieprzemijający, a to jest z kolei zachętą, by z piątkowej wycieczki po opowiadaniach stworzyć miły zwyczaj.

Piątek jest dniem tygodnia, w którym czytam najwięcej. Ostatnio również za sprawą #fridayflash. Po pierwsze, można trafić na bardzo ciekawych autorów, których nie byłoby szansy odkryć w inny sposób. Po drugie, przeczytanie już kilku bardzo różnych opowiadań, jedno za drugim, ale nie w jednej książce, ale na różnych blogach, stworzonych i prowadzonych w sposób bardzo osobisty, daje wrażenie pełni doznań. Po trzecie, w całej okazałości ujawnia się siła krótkiej formy literackiej: lektura jest szybka, intensywna i wcale nie mniej wciągająca niż najnowszy Dan Brown.

Oczywiście jest jedno “ale” – jeżeli ktoś czyta tylko autorów z list bestsellerów lub rekomendowanych przez najlepszych krytyków, na pewno nie polubi #fridayflash. Każdy, kto ma więcej odwagi na przygodę z literaturą, powinien być zadowolony.

Poniżej, na żywo, ostanie wpisy z #fridayflash. Zapraszam do czytania.

Related posts

• 26.11.2010 -- An Impulse Purchase [short story]
• 18.09.2009 -- An Orbital Flight With a Small Surprise [short story]
• 05.08.2009 -- Literatura na Twitterze
• 15.02.2009 -- Nanopowieść “Jan i Anna”
• 16.09.2011 -- 4 Powerful Tools to Schedule Social Media Updates

"Dobre opowiadania na piątek, czyli #fridayflash" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

“And what is this?” He asked the captain pointing with his eyes at the screen, where wrapped in a thick layer of brownish gases, an outline of Earth could be seen. “What?” The captain was evidently caught off guard. He seemed to be fully engrossed in a computer game illegally loaded as an additional application for the passenger orbital ferry autopilot system and needed a while to come back to reality.

“This! Is this what I paid 200 000 amereuro for?”

“Ahh, that,” the captain finally came to and smiled with a “not this again” smile to his co-pilot, Denise, or maybe Dennis. “You know, most of our customers are a bit… surprised with this view. It’s all because of those stratospheric gases. They should finally prohibit their emission.” The passenger grew slightly irritated with this remark and Denise, or maybe Dennis, added:

“We realize it looks better in photographs, and if you prefer, I can offer you a beautifully published album.”

“What?”

“An album of the most beautiful photos of Earth taken from the height of several meters above ground, and put together by the best photographers and over-realistic painters in the world.”

George Pearinsky, the first European of Polish decent in space, took the brochure (“album” was just too much of an overstatement) and barked under his nose “I didn’t pay 200 000 to look at pictures.” But he had to admit that seen from that distance, Mother Earth looked particularly bad. Greyish and ugly. Too ugly even when considering the steeply discounted promotional price of the flight.

“Remember to return it after the trip, they will be counted,” Denise, or maybe Dennis, warned him.

The commercial passenger number 0289/Mr. Pearinsky leafed through a couple of pages, compared the photos with the view outside and fell asleep. He always slept during flights, and he flew quite much, because he made a fortune as a trader of rights for the emission of stratospheric gases (he had connections in the appropriate European commission), and so he was needed in every geographical latitude.

“Calling the so-called Houston! We have this one problem, we have this one problem!” The captain was shouting in the direction of Pearinsky, which unavoidably meant the latter one woke up from a dream in which he was floating in space, signing lucrative contracts for the emission of carbon dioxide.

“So-called Houston! This one problem,” Denise, or maybe Dennis, was repeating.

“What’s this?” Pearinsky wanted to know with every cell of his wrapped-in-quilted-shit being.

“A Slovakian spy satellite on collision course. A Slovakian satellite on collision course,” the captain shouted, and both members of the crew faked quite well pressing the emergency buttons.

“Slovakian?”

“Yes, a post-NATO model. Decommissioned after everything became available on Bobble Earth,” the captain answered and added in Denise’s direction, “switching to manual controls. A three-degree course adjustment to the left. Starting descent.”

“And where’s this satellite that’s colliding with us?” The passenger wanted to know.

“Ah, nothing, it’s just passed us, you can’t see it now, but I can show you the camera footage,” Denise, or maybe Dennis answered and switched on the monitor.

“But the date here, that’s from two weeks ago?” The trader in stratospheric emissions got upset.

“Ah, yes, actually, two weeks ago we had a very similar situation,” the captain alertly added and quickly changed the subject, “What’s important now is that you get ready for about 2 minutes in the state of weightlessness, and not some Slovakian satellite from two weeks ago. Are you ready for this magnificent experience experienced so far by only…” the captain consulted his notes, “two hundred eighty eight commercial passengers?”

“I guess so. What do I need to do?”

“Just feel light.”

Pearinsky felt light for about 30 seconds and then he felt heavy and wanted to vomit. The bag was already ready and Denise handed it to the passenger quickly enough for the contents to land weightlessly inside the bag, and not outside.

When the carbon dioxide emissions trader looked at the full barf bag, he couldn’t help but comment:

“So yeah, I paid 200 grand to look at pictures and my own puke. Unforgettable memories, I’d say.”

“Such surprises happen to quite a few of our passengers, but with this satellite you had some extra luck, not every flight is so exciting,” the captain remarked reassuringly.
“OK, we’re going back to Earth now. I need to be home before eight, my wife has a yoga class tonight.”

Related posts

• 11.09.2009 -- The Third Attempt to Take the Teddy [short story]
• 26.11.2010 -- An Impulse Purchase [short story]
• 03.01.2010 -- Mobile fiction – what is it and why is it at all?
• 13.11.2009 -- Short Stories Made Cellphone Friendly
• 06.05.2011 -- Super Maja [opowiadanie]

"An Orbital Flight With a Small Surprise [short story]" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Court Merrigan
Originally from Nebraska, Court Merrigan has lived in various places East and West and is currently back in the US with his family. His short stories have appeared in Blackbird, Weber Review, Porcupine, Evergreen Review, The Summerset Review, Dublin Quarterly, The Kyoto Journal, Pindeldyboz, Identity Theory, and Angle, among others. He is currently working on a novel. He blogs at Endless Emendation

Password Incorrect is a truly zany collection of “tech-absurd” short stories by Nick Name, pen name for Polish author Piotr Kowalczyk, which only a networked world could have unleashed. It’s available for free from Feedbooks.

Start with the title story to see the absurd in action. My Kindle sat untouched for a couple weeks while I transitioned back to the U.S. from Thailand.  When I got back to my Kindle’s homepage again, I did a double take—Password Incorrect?  What password?  I never needed a damn password before!—until it all came back to me.  My reaction is strikingly similar to the befuddlement of the uniformly oddball characters of Password Incorrect confronted by the unexpected repercussions of their tech-doings.

Nearly all the 25 stories are flash fiction; that is, under 1000 words.  My favorite was “Wishes Shovel Best.”

On Christmas Eve Slawek Przekosniak received an SMS with these wishes: “Wishing yo good ping super new”.  He didn’t know who sent him that surprisingly enigmatic message.

Inspired, he creates software to manufacturing randomly bizarre messages, starting an online phenomenon that makes him the 67th-richest man in Poland.  Until a curmudgeonly official is offended by an SMS which reads “Wishes shovel best” and turns him over to the Inquiry Board, the Board of Inquiries, and the Special Security Agency.  Black limousines appear at his house on the night he is to receive a lobbied-for Site of the Year Award.  In the Age (Moment?) of Twitter, this seems less a merely imagined story than another possible permutation of reality.

Evening elementary school

“Part-time Evening Elementary School” features a school designed for kids “too busy to learn during the day due to the time spent on the difficult task of maintaining our country’s high ranking in the very competitive field of computer games.”  A school where PE classes are for stretching the spine and practicing joystick skills and English is considered vital because it allows “for quick mastery of games not yet translated into Polish.”

“Happiness in a Four-Pack” is about a revolutionary new product, “ingestible energizing happiness”.  Unfortunately, after an initial burst of popularity, sales soon collapse.  Consumer studies reveal that “customers don’t want to be happy.  They are much more effectively motivated by misfortune.”  Not to worry.  “That’s Sad” quickly comes on the market.  Its wide popularity causes the company’s owner to throw himself from a bridge in, you guessed it, a fit of happiness.

Outlandish characters are the order of the day. A sampling includes a professor from the Department of Westernmostenatatious European Polonisation, hockey-playing bacillus, and a Dr. Kaliszewski: “He entered the room happy as a lark, which normally accompanied him when he was happy as one. Now the lark was somewhat tense and you could feel it in the air.”

These are the sort of tropes, I think, that a native-English author would reject out of hand as clichés, but in Kowalczyk’s hands, manage to find new life. Gustave Flaubert, in teaching writing, counseled writers to find the “unexplored” element in the commonest of things, and I think this is what Kowalczyk has done here.  Password Incorrect abounds with literary dexterity without ever sinking to the merely clever.

A couple of the pieces don’t quite measure up, as in the one featuring a middle-aged man who regresses into an embryo and the one with a talk show host who is “So sensitive and so sweet at the same time.  Handsome.  Appetizing.  Just like a spring onion.”  Kowalczyk stretches quirky to the very edge of its readable definition, and, in a couple cases, beyond.  The collection would not have suffered from having only 20 stories.

Translated from Polish by Anna Etmanska, there are several spots where the English is, well, quirky.  Generally these are very minor, but still noticeable.  For instance: “He imagined Czeslawa Ceracz using this liquid and kept dreaming for good.”  Truth be told, I’m of two minds about this.  On the one hand, these are nothing an editor couldn’t quickly fix up.  On the other, they seem to me characteristic of the international English that is the world’s actual lingua franca, as opposed to that of the Queen.  So long as the text is readable, I don’t see any point in standing on ceremony.  The English of Password Incorrect reflects its origins in the mind of a non-native speaker, and the idiosyncrasies never seriously detract from the meaning or humor of the stories.  Therefore I don’t mind them.  Just bear in mind that as you read these stories, you will notice them.

We have so quickly come to take the internet for granted that I think we forget just how recent and radical a phenomenon it is.  As much as anything, these stories serve as a reminder.  Issued up from the heart of Poland by a wired writer in translated English making absurd light of situations unimaginable even a decade ago, ones fraught with the danger of banality.  But this nimble writer deftly zigzags to humor and sheer wackiness.  It has been suggested that multimedia “books” could be literature’s future, and that may well be.  But I think more likely candidates are the sort of short stories you’ll find in Password Incorrect, which exploits the networked world’s novelties while remaining true to the universal commonalities of the human experience.

You not likely come across anything quite like Password Incorrect any time soon.  Unless this work receives the wide audience it deserves and imitators spring up.  By  which time, I hope, Kowalczyk will have delivered another collection to our e-readers.

Note: For more of Piotr Kowalczyk’s tilted take on the world, including a one-second book promo, see his blog Password Incorrect.

Related posts

• 20.04.2009 -- Password Incorrect – mobile flash fiction
• 28.11.2008 -- Graham pisze o polskim absurdzie literackim
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?
• 03.06.2009 -- Pięć nowych książek w Feedbooks. Dlaczego?
• 02.06.2009 -- I Killed Myself in 1969 and It Works

"Zany Collection of Tech-absurd Short Stories" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

The Third Attempt to Take the Teddy

“Justyna, can I take Abrateddy to school?” Kamilka, a superfirst grade student, asked her mom while putting on her shoes with winter soles.

Mom was surprised by this sudden question, her daughter had stopped playing with the Abrateddy teddy bear around the time when she began to crawl. The teddy spent its time doing nothing on the top of the one closet where nobody wanted to clean. The Storczyks were to move to a bigger apartment as soon as dad got his promotion, which might not happen too quickly, because he was a schlemiel and worked in a field were schlemiels had no chance – in the toy industry.

The question went unanswered, because Justyna forgot she didn’t pack the juice for herself and Kamilka, and apart from that, she couldn’t find either one of her cell phones.

Soon everything was as always. Only the schlemiel dad noticed that Abrateddy didn’t breathe the dust on the top of the closet, but under the bed.

“She’s hiding the bear under the bed, maybe there’s something wrong with her?” He asked his wife, but both of them were getting ready to watch the “72 Hours” tv series, and then the neighbor rang and said he would call the cops if they were going to watch “72″ too loudly again.

“Marcin, can I take the bear to school?” Two weeks later Kamilka was much more decisive.

“You know Kamila that children in the superfirst and higher grades are not allowed to bring any toys to school, with the exception of the contracted by the school board developmental Onagonoshi devices, and I can’t give you permission.”

“But Marcin, you designed this bear! You made it yourself and you’re not proud of it? Please give me my teddy. I must!” Kamilka begged, and a small tear was shining in the corner of her eye, which she purposefully turned towards her dad, but since he was a schlemiel, he didn’t notice.

“I designed it myself, and I’m very proud that my almost grown-up daughter wants to play with it, and I will play with you, but I can’t let you take it to school. Oh, look, see how nicely it still holds together? We made it to last only two years, and here, just look at this!” Marcin admired his handiwork.

The third time was extreme. Kamilka screamed and refused to go and kept saying she was sick and wanted to stay with Abrateddy, and that her parents could go to work and leave her at home, because she had a fever and a lower body paralysis, which you couldn’t see.

“Kamila, please be reasonable if you want your friend Bryzia to visit you.”

Bryzia didn’t visit, because Kamilka stayed home that day and instead Justyna spoke with the teacher. She didn’t find out anything other than her daughter had been picked on and laughed at by other kids.

“And that’s it? The end?” Marcin the schlemiel asked, “I’m going to have words with this Miss Malwina. What does she think? I’m gonna tell her!”

“Yeah, you’re gonna tell her,” Justyna added angrily and went back to doing overdue homework, superfirst grade, second semester.

The reason for the teddybear desperation was discovered purely by accident in the same hallway, where just a few days ago Kamilka’s last stand took place. A friend of hers came over, but not Bryzia, because she was mad she couldn’t come the other day, but Michalinka, who immediately after stepping in said to Justyna:

“Excuse me! But why hasn’t Kamilka started to write a blog yet?”

Related posts

• 18.09.2009 -- An Orbital Flight With a Small Surprise [short story]
• 03.01.2010 -- Mobile fiction – what is it and why is it at all?
• 13.11.2009 -- Short Stories Made Cellphone Friendly
• 26.11.2010 -- An Impulse Purchase [short story]
• 28.03.2010 -- Mobile world: mobile fiction: eBooks

"The Third Attempt to Take the Teddy [short story]" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Ten wpis poświęcony jest literaturze tworzonej i publikowanej na Twitterze. Jak mam o tym nie napisać, jak wierzę w krótką formę, to raz. Uważam, że każde ograniczenie wyzwala ludzką kreatywność, to dwa. A Twitter ze swoim limitem 140 znaków przyspieszył rozwój twórczości literackiej nowego rodzaju: mikrofikcji, czy już raczej nanofikcji.

Chodzi mi o autentyczne literackie dokonania, których podstawową cechą jest to, że ponieważ mieszczą się w 140 znakach mogą być opublikowane na Twitterze. Pod opisem każdego z działań pojawiają się ostatnie wpisy. Czytajcie co się da już teraz. Wszystko zmienia w dużym tempie. Niektóre projekty prowadzone są przez kilka, kilkanaście dni (jak Poskromienie Złośnicy),  a niektórzy twórcy po prostu przestają pisać (jak @twirledview, który tworzył miniopowiadania składające się równo ze 140 znaków).

Będę nie tylko dodawał użytkowników (@), ale również hashtagi (#). Te ostatnie pozwalają szybko wyłowić wpis zawierający odpowiednią treść (w tym przypadku utwór literacki, niejednokrotnie znakomity), a pochodzące od każdego, kto chce dołączyć ze swoimi dokonaniami do tej a nie innej grupy.

Twitteratura w najczystszej postaci do przeczytania poniżej. Zapraszam:

@arjunbasu

Data dodania: 02.08.2009

Arjun Basu tworzy Twisters. To chyba najbardziej znany przykład twitteratury. Jak sama nazwa mówi, te krótkie (wiadomo) opowiastki są niezwykle intensywne, wyraziste i niejednokrotnie wywołują duże zamieszanie w umyśle czytającego. 95% wpisów na @arjunbasu to właśnie Twisters. Konto autora to przykład konsekwentnie prowadzonego i bardzo zadbanego profilu literackiego. Użytkownicy dołączają do listy czytelników po to, by regularnie sycić się mikrofikcją pierwszej klasy.

@smallstories

Data dodania: 02.08.2009

Small Stories to formy literackie o nanodługości, idealnie mieszczą się więc w limicie zadanym przez Twittera. Ich twórca, Adrian Graham, przeciera szlaki literaturze cyfrowej, a teksty pojawiające się na profilu @smallstories są tego bardzo dobrym przykładem. Te najlepsze do tej pory opublikowane stanowią treść książki Eating Grass, do ściągnięcia za darmo z Feedbooks.

#vss

Data dodania: 02.08.2009

#vss to hashtag, za którym kryje się określenie very short story. Każdy, kto publikuje na Twitterze, może opatrzyć swoje utwory takim tagiem i wszyscy, którzy “prenumerują” literaturę mikroblogową (sposób: grupy lub rss) będą dostawać je na bieżąco. #vss jest obecnie jednym z najczęściej używanych tagów, agregujących wpisy literackie. Jego twórcą i propagatorem jest @veryshortstory.

#sixwords

Data dodania: 02.08.2009

Spośród inicjatyw literackich, które zdefiniowane są za pomocą zadania do wykonania (np. one sentence story) dużą popularnością w ostatnich tygodniach cieszy się #sixwords. Ktoś mógłby zarzucić, że nie jest to literatura. Według mnie jest, chociaż prawdą jest, że six words uprawiane jest nie tylko przez ludzi, którzy świadomie zajmują się twórczością literacką. Z drugiej strony to bardzo dobrze – literatura przedostaje się dzięki temu do tych, którzy nigdy wcześniej się nią nie interesowali.

#haiku

Data dodania: 02.08.2009

Pisząc o literaturze na Twitterze herezją byłoby nie napisać o #haiku. Wpisy pojawiają się co kilka minut. Haiku to niezmiennie jeden z popularnych tematów na stronie wyszukiwania zasobów Twittera. I przykład, że niektóre formy literackie dają sobie świetnie radę w każdych okolicznościach.

#hashtagstory

Data dodania: 02.08.2009

Na koniec mój pomysł na historie opowiadane za pomocą popularnych w danej chwili hashtagów. Jest odpowiedzią na pytanie: “czy można tworzyć po angielsku bez pomocy tłumacza?”. Być może zainspiruje was do myślenia o tworzeniu utworów uniwersalnych, dostępnych dla każdego użytkownika internetu. Więcej o projekcie tutaj.

#mfic

Data dodania: 28.08.2009

#mfic to microfiction. Ciekawostką jest to, że nowy tag powstał po to, by nie dać się zlokalizować spamerom, którzy automatycznie przesyłają informacje z każdego wpisu, opatrzonego popularnym tagiem. Podejrzewam, że takim popularnym tagiem stał się #wpss. Zanim więc spam dotrze do #mfic, można się cieszyć prawie nieskażoną literaturą.

#9wordstory

Data dodania: 14.09.2009

Kolejny przykład dynamiki, z jaką rozwija się twórczość na Twitterze. Autorzy, którzy uważają, że format #sixwords się zużył, lub co bardziej prawdopodobne – jest zbyt wymagający (= zbyt krótki) – przerzucają się na mikrofikcję składającą się z dziewięciu słów.

Related posts

• 16.05.2010 -- Ukazała się antologia literatury na Twitterze [notka]
• 14.05.2010 -- Fan of Twitter fiction? Check #VSS Anthology
• 12.10.2009 -- 15 Free Covers for Twitter Fiction Books
• 15.02.2009 -- Nanopowieść “Jan i Anna”
• 03.05.2010 -- Hashtagstories – Stories Written as a Sequence of Twitter Hashtags

"Literatura na Twitterze" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

This is a press release of my “Password Incorrect”, probably a first e-book designed for mobile reading.

[18.10.2008] – Nick Name’s “Password Incorrect” is a selection of short stories addressed especially for mobile users. The book was designed to be downloaded for free to iPhone, which among its many other features seems to be also a great e-book reader. Opposite to devices specifically designed for e-book reading, which still look inattractive and suffer early stage problems, iPhone with it’s large color screen, smooth interface and milions of users has the real power of rediscovering the pleasure of reading books – so that we could hear a louder „bye, bye” to paper.

The time for the reader’s change of mind is perfect. With Stanza application, which allows to read books in ePub format on iPhone/iPod and Feedbooks’s Online Catalog, a typical gadget-hunting, forward-looking consumer, who perceives reading paper books as an outdated way of spending time – can rediscover book reading – or reinvent it.

Book description

25 stories, sometimes funny and sometimes mean, selected for „Password Incorrect” are addressing the world of the new type of a reader… and spot the absurd of our present day lives: fights with the less and less comprehensible equipment, pursuit of the latest technological news, pitfalls of our modern lifestyle, useless inventions and issues racing in all directions at a breakneck speed. A lot of entertainment and a little food for thought.

Just perfect for the moment when you’re finally bored with exploring the alarm settings on your new iPhone.

How to download the book?

Step 1
Go to iTunes, and then to App Store. Find Stanza application and download it to your iPhone. Until 18th of October 2008 you can get a free version of this program.

Step 2
Open Stanza in your iPhone, go to “Online Catalog”, select “Free Books by Feedbooks”, and then search for the book by name or title.

Content

Password Incorrect
Wishes Shovel Best
A Man Called Desk
Mini-Anti-Aggressor
Part-Time Evening Elementary School
Happiness in a Four-pack
Childult
Micro-hockey
Fetus Replacement IQ Booster
Kefir on a Very Bad Day
Nose Number 32
The Language of Worldwide Communication
An Inquisition-Style Massage
Puddle Skin Care
Abnormales
All-in-One EveryToy
Mr. Copypaste
Parachute No Limit
Coma Longer Than Expected
Snoboholic
An Impulse Purchase
Ul Fas Spe Rea Course
The Robotic Intelligence Test
Soup a Priori
An Orbital Flight With a Small Surprise

Related posts

• 25.05.2009 -- How to download a book directly from a tweet?
• 13.12.2008 -- Stanza – cudo, które robi z iPhone’a czytnik e-booków
• 28.11.2008 -- Graham pisze o polskim absurdzie literackim
• 26.11.2008 -- W czołówce autorów Feedbooks.com
• 22.11.2010 -- Does 30,000 downloads convince you to read a book?

"Password Incorrect – mobile flash fiction" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.