> A Word from the Other Co-President:
>
> OK, I can really understand your reservations.
> Now, this thread sorta' changed from what I
>personally intended. I would enjoy a feature that
>posts good examples of Dave and Sam's works. If
>the story was humorous, then so be it, but I was
>thinking more along the lines of good readin',
>not poking fun at their earlier blunders.
>

Well, I talked to Sam in email about the possibility of posting more recent works if enough people really wanted to see them. I have probably two or three more recent stories that I think are good but have made the rounds of all the major SF/F short fiction publishers without selling. Two of them are more vignette than short story, and one is just a weird piece that I was really proud of, but isn't as original or as well-executed as I had previously thought it was. (It also has a glaring logic error that almost sent me into convulsions when it was pointed out to me--I have no idea why I didn't realize it myself, and it would take a fairly major restructuring of the story to fix. I'll leave its discovery as an exercise for the reader should it ever be posted.) These stories have pretty much been "bottom-drawered", because there is only just so much you can do to a story before you just have to move on to something else.

I'd be willing to post those stories to an "unofficial" page on the RinkWorks server, much like the AGLL page, which is not linked to by any of the other RinkWorks features and is only accesible by directly going to URL or by a link here in the message forum. That keeps the readership to what I think is a small but extremely intelligent and loyal (suckupsuckup) faction of the RinkWorks readership.

Aside from the publication rights issue, there is another reason why I really wouldn't want to create an official RinkWorks page with "good" stories of mine as the content: I just wouldn't feel right doing it. I want to be a professional writer, and posting my stories on a web page with advertising banners at the top and a multi-colored logo and all the fanfare of being a RinkWorks feature doesn't strike me as the way to go about it. Self promotion is a necessary evil, but that would seem like too much to me, too much like the desperate pleadings of a hack writer ("Please read my stuff! Oh Please oh please! Look, I've got pretty colors!")

So, I guess if enough people are interested, I'd be willing to post a few of my better stories to a low-key page. So who's interested? We've already got a poll going for "Who wants to read bad stories?", so now I guess we'll have one going for "Who wants to read OK stories?" :-)