Kickstart Your Career

by Jamie Lackey

I have had three stories appear in Penumbra's lovely emag. The first was published in the August 2012 issue, the second in the April 2013 issue, and the third in the November 2013 issue.

My writing life has been going pretty well since August 2012. I appeared in my first invitation-only anthologies, joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and ran a successful Kickstarter for One Revolution: A Year of Flash Fiction, my first short story collection.

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding site for creative projects. It's similar to a PBS pledge drive--you back projects and receive related rewards. People have funded books, movies, and games, as well as new tech gadgets, dice, jewelry, and tons of other things.

I write a lot of flash fiction (stories that are under 1000 words), so when I decided to create a Kickstarter project for my own fiction, I chose to write one flash piece each month to post on my website. If my funding was successful, I'd collect the new stories, along with some of my other previously published work, into a book. My backer rewards included print or electronic versions of the finished book, credit on the dedication page, and the option to give me a story prompt. I wrote thirteen original stories for the project, each one to a theme dictated by one of my backers.

I set my goal at $1200, and I exceeded it by enough that I was able to get some amazing cover art by Lukáš Zídka. I printed the book through Amazon's CreateSpace service, mailed out copies to my backers, and posted the book to sell on Amazon.

The most fun part of the project was seeing what kind of prompts people came up with and writing the stories. My prompts ranged from "zombie shark" to "cheerful apocalypse" to "something with flowers." I enjoy writing to a prompt (which is one of the reasons I love Penumbra's themed issues so much) and it was a lot of fun to come up with an idea and write a story for a specific person. It was also really wonderful and validating to receive support from friends, family, and complete strangers, and it was exciting to see how people reacted to their individual stories.

The hardest parts were getting the ebook sorted out and trying to promote the book after it was finished.

A lot of other awesome people and publications are using Kickstarter as a funding platform, including Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, Daily Science Fiction, and Crossed Genres, and it's been a great experience for me.

Jamie Lackey earned her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. Her fiction has been accepted by over a dozen different venues, including The Living Dead 2, Daily Science Fiction, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She reads slush for Clarkesworld Magazine and is an assistant editor at Electric Velocipede.

Learn more about Jamie Lackey on her website. Follow her on Twitter, and like her on facebook.