Plugging Literature into the Web
Since 2003, I’ve maintained a literary presence online through websites, blogs, sneaky email practices and now twitter. I began writing fiction online in October of 2003 with an older version of this very website (created by Paul Pratte) wherein I wrote one story everyday for a year. The following year I took the daily writing experiment and combined it with visual art, using a painting or drawing from a contemporary artist with an online presence as inspiration into a piece of flash fiction.
My third year of writing online involved a subterranean distribution system whereby I emailed stories to a global omnium gatherum of people (artists, writers, friends, etc) who then printed them up and hide them in the nooks and crannies of their world. My email address was at the end of each story along with a plea to contact me with the discoverer’s whereabouts. I kept track of all this at ballofdirt.com.
In 2007, I self-published a small sampling of the stories that I’d emailed out. “Fast Fictions” was launched with a fifty-venue, one-day only reading tour of Vancouver. As the stories were extremely small and plentiful, I figured a series of ridiculously short readings would be an appropriate book launch.
In 2008, as an experiment in truth, falsehood and fiction online I once again wrote a story everyday but this time under a completely different pseudonym each and every day. In turn, I received hate mail (when I pretended to be Yann Martel), fan mail and questions asking me for my professional medical advice.
My latest adventure in persistence and technology can be found at twitter.com/kevinspenst where I’ve been writing poetry everyday since December of 2008.
Plugging My Work Online and Off
My poetry has appeared three times in 2009 at four and twenty, a short form literary journal (April, July and August issues). I’ve also been published online at inscribed. In the world of print, my poetry has also appeared in one cool word, a Vancouver arts magazine. Most recently, a longer poem (rebuilt out of computer code and twitter poems from August) has appeared at ditchpoetry.
My prose has most recently appeared in hacksaw zine, a DIY, high-brow-punk publication out of Vancouver, Canada. Also, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the first ever Broken Pencil literary anthology, Can’t Lit, which will include one of my short-short stories.
Plugging a Book Right into Your Hands
You can purchase a copy of Fast Fictions online through Black Budgie Zines.
For all other questions, concerns and comments, email kDOTspenst[at]shawDOTca