Mobile fiction – what is it and why is it at all?
Mobile fiction? What the hell is it? Another stupid name “invented” by a DIY author to describe his writing? Probably you’re right. But are you brave enough to give it a try? The fact that The New York Times didn’t write about it, doesn’t mean that it’s completely unimportant.
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. »»»
Short stories made cellphone friendly
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.
An Orbital Flight With a Small Surprise [short story]
My next #fridayflash is about daily pleasures in a very near future…
An Orbital Flight With a Small Surprise
George Pearinsky was disappointed. They stuck him into this thing resembling a caftan, not a flight suit, and he couldn’t even take a photo of himself, but maybe it was better without one anyway, because in this vomit-green inflatable quilted shit, he looked like a huge pear, even though he weighed only 125.5 kilograms.
“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. »»»
“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. »»»
The Third Attempt to Take the Teddy [short story]
Here is my #fridayflash short shory.
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. »»»
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. »»»
Why #vss and #wpss are good for a writer?
For those who are not very much involved into Twitter literature: #vss stands for very short story, #wpss is West Port Short Story. Both are the hashtags used to spot literary pieces written by Twitter authors. Why are they so good for writers?
They make writing easier :. You are constanly inspired by all the great stories, which are accompanied by both tags. You don’t wait, you write – because you don’t want to be left behind. For a non-English writer this is also an invitation to break his limits. I skipped #twittnovel, because I realized I can’t be good at it. With literary hashtags I feel like a member of a community, the one who has to learn a lot, but also the one, who is obliged to try. As I fixed my mind on tech-absurd, I’ll write #vss and #wpss on that and only that. Maybe my English is not good enough, but I hope the stories will be interesting enough to accept my language as it is.
They promote short literature :. I greatly believe that the future of literature are short narrative forms – like the ones on Twitter. As both tags lure more and more writers and readers, they are a great way to help digital literature break into mainstream. People stop reading books, because they perceive them as time consuming. But reading a #vss can give you a similar doze of emotions. And it takes a moment – or a stream of moments. »»»
An Impulse Purchase [short story]
This story, published in “Password Incorrect“, is an example of how the consumer habits would evolve and what products could achieve the status of the impulse ones. This is not a pure imagination, this can really happen.
An Impulse Purchase
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. »»»
I’m starting a “Google-translated fiction” project
When I was thinking of how to attract absurd-lovers from around the world I had one big obstacle to overcome – my ability to communicate in English. My level is good enough to start thinking of an English blog, but poor enough to call myself “a writer”. I thought of a stand-by translator who could have helped me to write this blog’s entries. Yeah. Not possible.
Luckily I’m an absurdist, or at least I pretend to be one. What I write in Polish is more or less absurd. And here the helping hand came from Google Translate Beta. It stroke my mind: why not trying that? This would be in a style I obviously do things (no sense at all), which at the same time is designed to spot things around us, which don’t make sense either, but we don’t know it (some sense).
The simple fact is, that Google translations are going to hugely influence the world communication. To the point nobody would care about bad automatic translations, as they serve one crucial purpose: »»»
Best wishes shovel [3Google-translated]
This short story is a part of a Google-translated fiction project (GT fiction). This translation was made by Google, from Polish to English, then from English to Polish, then from Polish to English. That’s why it’s described as 3Google-translated.
Best wishes shovel
Slawek Przekośniak got to wiligię SMS wishes: “I wish you good ping fajno new. I do not know who sent him the surprisingly mysterious message. I do not know to this day, and the damage – that person owes its present status and the first on the list of 67 richest Poles.
Then, in a beautiful white and russet wigilijny evening Przekośniak, a few days earlier ejected from the site for fanatics utopijnych extreme phobias (www.ilovefobia.pl), came on the concept.
It was a good idea, and the following text message ( “Happy dray accidentally only sincere lamb”) utwierdził convinced him that it was the idea to life. »»»
Recently updated Polish tech-absurdist and mobile fiction writer 3.0 beta. Addicted to ebooks and technology. Guest writer at 
Loading ...
