Gary's Tiny Timmy's Tweets

Tiny Timmy Tweets: Tub Travails

Tiny Timmy loved his bath toys. Except for the whirring one, the hairdryer that Mommy would sometimes toss into the tub. See Timmy splash!

Tiny Timmy hated taking baths. Especially when Mommy held his head underwater to teach him how to count. How much is a gazillion, Timmy?

"Dive, dive!" Tiny Timmy said in the tub, making like a submarine. "You need more ballast," his mom replied. "How about this cinderblock?"

Tiny Timmy's Tweets

More tweets from Gary's horror series:


Tiny Timmy was told never to play with his father's table saw. But he seemed bound and determined to become known as Tinier Timmy.

"Hot! Too hot, Mommy!" Tiny Timmy cried. Mom pulled him out of the microwave and put him back on the floor. "Now will you please _behave_?"

"Time to learn a new word, little man," said Tiny Timmy's haggard babysitter, cleaver in hand. "Can you say 'decapitation'?"

"Help! Help!" Tiny Timmy cried from the well's depths. "Won't anyone save me?" The piqued director called it a wrap, and the crew left.

Gary Cuba Presents Tiny Timmy's Tweet's: The Beginning

And now, with no further ado, guest blogger Gary Cuba, a good friend of mine, a slush reader, and fellow writer. Heeeeere's Gary!



Dave has been a great e-friend of mine for quite a while, and he once invited me to do a guest blog. I'm not sure what that actually means, but recently, something popped up that may justify me figuring it out.

So what it is, is this: I ran across a tweeter story site recently (specifically, http://tweetthemeat.blogspot.com). And, given that I can no longer find the will or the way to actually write a blasted full-length story myself, I got lost in this strange concept. 140 characters to comprise a tale? Sheesh. I've tried six-sentencers, 100-word drabbles, 50-worder stories. But _140-character_ tweeters?!

Then I got hooked with the notion, once I tried it. It's more compelling than Sudoku. More fun than sex. (Well, given my advanced age and prostrate condition, it _seems_ that way, anyway.)

Me loves it.

And as I began to wend my way more into it, it occurred to me that I got stuck on a particular theme. Sort of a "subgenre" of the tweet horror genre, as it were.

I call it: "Tiny Timmy Tweets." Here are a few to prime the pump:


"Doggy! Cute doggy!" tiny Timmy said gleefully, toddling toward the lumbering, slavering cur. "Didja just eats some whip cream, didja?"

Tiny Timmy looked into the well, its bottom lost in the darkness. "Gosh, it's deep," he said. "It'd be awful to fall into it." I grinned.

Tiny Timmy watched his mom prepare the turkey. She looked down at him and said, "Now, what shall we stuff it with, little man?"

"Timmy, you bad boy," his mom said. "You come here at once!" Tiny Timmy slunk further under his bed. Okay, he shouldn't have eaten the cat.

Well, you get the idea. Any other Tiny Timmy pieces rumbling around in your reptilian brain center? I've got dozens. Don't worry: Tiny Timmy can never _really_ expire!

What Lies in Wait Beyond the Next Branch

Just some philosophical musing today at the approach of an important anniversary.
One week from tomorrow (June 5th) is the 1 year anniversary of my very first story submission dropped in a mailbox. It's also my 5th wedding anniversary, but that's not what I'm talking about today. :)

I started writing fiction in 2007, and jumped right in, diving head first into writing a novel with no prior experience writing fiction, no critique group and rare feedback from anyone. I finished a rough draft of that novel last year. Over that whole year I hadn't even considered writing short stories. If you want to make it big, I reasoned, you've got to aim high. Book royalties, that's the key. Once I finished writing the entire book, I polished the first 3 chapters to the best shine I knew how, wrote a synopsis for them and dropped them in the mailbox addressed to Tor. Their website at the time estimated 4-6 months for reply to slush, so I figured I had time to polish some more chapters before I had any chance of hearing back from them. I figured most places will take at least as long as the time estimate they give you. Right? Wrong!

I had their rejection in my mailbox 12 days later, a grainy photocopy of a form letter: "Dear Submitter", "signed, the editors". Now what should I do, I thought. Not that many places even take submissions of just 3 chapters + synopsis. Many places require you to work through an agent. Many others require an entire manuscript. I found another publisher that would take 3 + synopsis, Elder Signs Press, and sent it off to them. Once that was out the door I decided I needed a change in tactic.

Since novels take such an ungodly amount of time to write, and since so few publishers will take 3 chapter submissions, I decided I'd better get writing something shorter. So I wrote up my first short story, originally titled The Long-sought Purpose of the Divining Man. It was filled with almost constant exclamation points and semi-colons as I'd had a secret love for these punctuations. It was very long and had all kinds of problems, but of course I thought it was great. :)

I made my very first story post to Baen's Bar, the critiquing forum associated with Jim Baen's Universe. It took me quite a while to work up the courage. What if someone steals my work? What if someone rips my story apart? But I sucked it up, because quite frankly, their money was among the best pay in the short story biz. And of course, the good Barflies there told me what they really thought of it, pointing out all the problems that they could find. "Wow, this is harder than I thought", I said, but at the same time was delighted to get prompt and knowledgeable feedback not only from fellow writers who were more experienced than I, but from the slush readers Edith Maor, Gary Cuba, and Sam Hidaka.

I've used Baen's Bar both to give and receive critiques since then and have yet to see its equal. The critiques I've received there have helped me grow as a writer much more quickly than dogging through it on my own. In the year since I started writing shorts I've learned 10 times what I learned the year before trying on my own.

I also found other useful writing forums like the Writers of the Future forum, and Hatrack River forum where I began wonderful friendships, discussed the ins and outs of writing and of the publishing business, and just had a great time. :)

More recently I've started grabbing writer friends on Facebook, which has been fun. Many of them give frequent updates about tour dates, publications, and you can just interact with them for fun too. It's been awesome. Before you start talking to these people it's easy to put them up on a pedestal and think of them as some sort of strange otherworldly being that can pull prose out of their ears unbidden, but they're folks just like you and me (albeit talented ones).

Anyhoo, I sent that ESP novel submission out over 300 days ago now, and have queried at 6 and 9 months without even an acknowledgment in return. How different would my writing career be nowadays if I had sent that first manuscript off to ESP instead of Tor. I probably would never have started writing short stories, so I wouldn't have come across critique forums like Baen's Bar. I never would've made the awesome friends I've made, and I would be left slogging through the revisions of that novel (or ones of a second novel) with little or no feedback to help me understand what works in stories and what doesn't. ALL it would've taken would have been a different address on that one envelope, and this would be so different.

I'm glad I addressed that first envelope to Tor, it set me on the path I've traveled to be where I am today. :)

Now I just need to get back to revising that novel! Such a daunting task now that I have a pretty good idea what I like and don't like about different stories!

Soon to come: A special guest blogger. Who could it be? More details soon.