I had an e-mail from Casey Murphy of Folded Word last week saying that he’d like to write a blog post about the process of sending out my stories, and was I interested in answering a few questions? Being the shy and retiring sort of person that I am, I hesitated for approximately 2.4 nanoseconds before replying in the affirmative.
As it happens, this is a textbook example of the power of Twitter. I’m pretty certain that the only reason that I was on Casey’s radar at all was because I’d had a piece of TwitFic published by PicFic, who are the TwitFic (or – in their terminology – picofiction) arm of Folded Word (you are following this, aren’t you?). Not long after this piece was published, I was longlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize, and – not surprisingly – I made a bit of a fuss about this on Twitter, and that seems to have led directly to this piece.
You don’t need me to explain the moral of this,do you? If you’re remotely serious about promoting yourself as a writer, get on Twitter now. Make sure you follow me, obviously – and I might even follow you back 🙂