Election Day Fiction: Participatory Democracy

The new issue of ThugLit is out and I'm delighted to say my short story "Participatory Democracy" is one of the stories therein. The issue is ONLY 99 cents, so fire up your reading device or kindle app and go get it. Special thanks to editor Todd Robinson for his excellent suggestions for making the story better.

ThugLit is back

It's actually been back for awhile. There's now a new ThugLit page on Facebook so if you do the FB thing, you should go here and like it.

How I Know I'm a Real Writer

I am not ashamed to say I have a "Google Alert" set for my name. Not only does that allow me to keep up with the activities of Katherine Tomlinson of Manchester, England (pediatric nurse and music lover) and the Katherine Tomlinson who works in Vermont politics, but it also lets me know when I am mentioned somewhere.

The nature of the Internet being what it is, these mentions are sometimes very far away from their original source and like messages in the kids' game of telephone, sometimes you're surprised at what the final result is.

Tonight an alert showed up that sent me to a site that was offering a free e-book download of my story "Proof of Life," originally published on ThugLit. The story link was in with a bunch of links to articles about bathroom drains. My story had somehow come to their attention because of the phrase "bathroom drain" in my narrative.

Two years after the story appeared in ThugLit and a month after it was reprinted on A Twist of Noir, some unknown entity liked it enough to scoop it up and ... pass it around. They're not charging a fee for the download, so I'm inclined to view it as free publicity.

You're no one 'til somebody steals your work.