Welcome to the Vortex

Welcome to the Vortex.

This is a space I’ve been meaning to create for a while. I have written quite a few different works — mostly short stories, but also one novella — in the past few years. A couple of them have been published, but most have been sitting in my hard drive. I feel like I’ve been waiting for the right time to publish them, but there’s always a self-imposed issue.

At some point, I had considered publishing these on Amazon via KDP, but they don’t allow you to publish stories for free. I’d have to charge for them, even if it was only $0.99. I don’t want that. The idea of putting these stories behind a paywall sounds terrible.

Stories are meant to be read. I have ideas for more stories than time to write them, but they keep coming “…like children, begging to be born,” as Florence Welch aptly puts it.

Right now, it’s a hobby and I’m happy as it is. That being said, I don’t think it’s arrogant for a writer to want to be read. Stories take on new shapes in every reader’s mind’s eye. Different sentences mean different things to different readers which are already different from the meaning a writer tried to impart on it when writing it in the first place.

Have I written anything worthwhile? Have I anything important to say? I don’t know, I don’t think so, but the hope is that the stories I write at least entertain. In a world of total entertainment forever, if someone chooses to spend 20-30 minutes reading one of my short stories instead of doing any other one million things available to them, that would always be payment enough.

There’s nothing more valuable than time, because of how limited a resource it is for each one of us. It’s mind blowing to me that any reader should choose to spend some of that time reading something I wrote. It’s an honor.

I want to send my stories out to be read. The Vortex is my vessel.