Password Incorrect

Mo-books, writer 2.0, tech-absurd | Mo-booki, pisarz 2.0, tech-absurd

Interview: Nick Name

It’s my pleasure to  republish an interview we had in early 2009 with Adrian Graham for The Digital Fiction Show. The original blog is gone, but you can read Adrian’s great stuff at Small Stories project.

Who exactly is Nick Name or is his identity being kept secret for a creative reason?

Nick Name is a person or a team, rather, who wants to be a living example of something which is happenig in front of our eyes – people are getting more and more identities. In times of mighty Internet, people select, adjust, create who they want to be to what they want to achieve – and they are just using this possibility of being anonymous to put different faces around. Each one of us has several Internet nicknames, personalities. Nick Name is just the opposite – several people try to have/can have/have one personality. It’s an artistic experiment, early stage, we’ll see how it evolves. »»»

Interview: Mobile ebook author

Please read below an interview I had a great pleasure to give to a self-publishing guru, Joanna Penn. The original one can be found at her fantastic blog, The Creative Penn, a must read for every writer 2.0.

Continuing our series of interviews with inspirational authors, today we have Nick Name or Niżej Podpisany in Polish.
These are the pen names of Piotr Kowalczyk from Warsaw, Poland who I met on Twitter . Here is the interview with him which is basically unedited to preserve his unique (and brilliant) expression!

Tell us a bit about yourself

My real name is Piotr Kowalczyk. I love absurd fiction. Call myself a late follower of Roland Topor and an early follower of Etgar Keret:) My Polish nickname/pen name is Niżej Podpisany (Signed Below) – to spot the major characteristic of a human at the times of Web 2.0 – many identities you can use to sign your opinion, post, comment. It works even better in English, although I realize that it may sound obvious.

I started to write short stories about three years ago after an operation (backbone). Before that I worked as a copywriter and art director – and still continue – this is where not only satisfaction comes from;) 3 years ago I decided to start a publishing house to issue my books. This was a great experience with one single conclusion – if you’re not big, you’re basically dead. »»»

Interview: Published on Feedbooks #3 – Nick Name

A couple of weeks before I had a great pleasure to be interviewed via Google Wave by the founder of Feedbooks, Hadrien Gardeur. The interview had originally appeared at the Feedbooks Blog.

Feedbooks is my favourite website for self-published authors and mobile e-book fans. If you haven’t been there yet, it’s high time to do it right now!

Nick Name is a tech-absurdist from Poland. His ironic short stories show how deeply our lives depend on technology. Runs litexperimental projects including Twitter’s #hashtagstory and Google-translated fiction. Guest writer at TeleRead, Publetariat and Fiction Matters. Believes in mobile e-books. They can bring the joy of reading to those, who don’t feel like consuming books the old-fashioned way. His dream is to be a default fiction author for any mobile device with eReading capabilities.

Hello Nick Name, you write both in Polish and in English. How hard is it for an author to write in two languages ?

My mother tongue is Polish. Beautiful, rich, melodious language. On the other side I don’t think I’ll ever feel good enough to write stories in English. But web 2.0 opens so many doors for a writer, that I decided to spend some money on a professional English translation of my stories. This was after I discovered Feedbooks and all the great things an author can benefit from. So now I have two versions of the same book – in Polish and in English. This gives me one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare chances of reaching readers at home and abroad. »»»

E-book covers inspired by the design of mobile applications

I’m a mobile freak and here you have another prove of it. These are the brand new covers, I’ve designed with a help of my Twitter friends for two volumes of my short stories, which will be available in a couple of weeks through Smashwords/Barnes&Noble. In the meantime you can download a free edition here. I describe the stories as tech-absurd. The bot-behaving gadget-eating error-ready part of you will understand, what I mean.

The brief I issued to myself was simple: get an attention of geeks with a message: “technology is wonderful, but…” (oh, and check the bottom bar for options).

O planach związanych z Barnes&Noble

Jak wcześniej pisałem, bez żadnej łaski można znaleźć się w ofercie amerykańskiego Barnes&Noble. Wystarczy opublikować książkę w serwisie Smashwords. Gdy publikacja spełni kilka wymogów formalnych, znajdzie się w katalogu Premium, a to oznacza zakwalifikowanie do oferty B&N. Niedawno w mailu do autorów, Mark Coker, szef Smashwords podzielił się informacją, że podobna umowa została podpisana również z Sony eBook Store.

W tym wpisie chciałbym podzielić się kilkoma uwagami o tym, jak system działa w praktyce, zdradzić swoje plany, a także poprosić o pomoc. »»»

“Zany collection of tech-absurd short stories”

Please find below a full text of Court Merrigan’s review of my book Password Incorrect. I’m really proud of is as this is a first, and I hope not last, international assessment of the book, which I’m trying to promote to English-speaking readers without any publisher’s help.

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. »»»

Nie dało się w Merlinie? Zawsze można w Barnes&Noble

Ten wpis powinien zaciekawić małych wydawców i autorów, marzących o tym, by ich książki znalazły się w szerokiej dystrybucji – nawet jeśli nie w każdej księgarni na rogu, to przynajmniej w największej polskiej księgarni internetowej, Merlin.pl. Jak jest naprawdę – wiadomo, niespecjalnie. Ale na szczęście na Merlinie świat się nie kończy. A wszystko za sprawą możliwości, jakie daje web 2.0. »»»

Google-translated fiction v.1.09

It’s been eight long months since I started a litexperimental project called Google-translated fiction. A simple description is: letting technology, in this case GT Beta, influence the final effect of human’s writing. Major reason I’m running this project is to establish a presence of technological tools in literature in order to eliminate language limitations. Sounds academic, a better explanation would be: an idea to access international audience by a non-English writer.

Below I’m comparing two Google-translations of a single short story. The story in its original Polish version is fixed, but it’s improving at a pace of Google Translate. I must say that recently there has been a substantial development. Probably it happened at the time new languages were added to the service. That’s why a current version of GT-fiction is 1.09, not 1.0009.

I’ll make frequent updates to this 1GT-ed story, as this is showing another dimension of digital literature: it can change (hopefully improve) without the participation of an author. A literary text is no longer ultimate. It’s dynamic, flowing and unpredictable. With my passion to tech-absurd–it’s technology which is improving it or killing it. »»»

A book promotion running until year 2109

A hundred-year-long book promotion. Is it a joke? Definitely not. I’m serious about it. As serious as a tech-absurd writer can be. It’s possible, it takes half an hour and it makes you feel really great. Look at the screenshot below:

When did I do it? Before lunch. How did I do it? I’ve scheduled one hundred tweets (yes, one tweet a year) with a link to Password Incorrect, my mobilefiction book available for free from Feedbooks. There are a couple of Twitter apps you can use for that, like CoTweet or TweetLater. My choice was Hootsuite.

Now, the most important question: why did I do it? There are several reasons, you just need to skip this distracting thought at the back of your head, saying “all that doesn’t make sense at all”. »»»

Pięć nowych książek w Feedbooks. Dlaczego?

Wczoraj, korzystając z jednodniowej przerwy na niereklamę, umieściłem w Feedbooks pięć książek. Ktoś spyta “po jaką lolerę, jak masz już dwie, a przecież niedawno sam wyrzucałeś, więc nie wiem”. Wszystko się zgadza, sam wyrzucałem. Wtedy powody były inne, teraz, by wrzucić, są inne: »»»

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