Wired Tales

New Story Forthcoming

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:18:49 -0500

Here it is, March already, and the February issue of Wired Tales still isn’t ready yet. This month’s story is in decent shape, but it’s not ready for primetime yet. It needs another couple of revision passes before it’s up to your high standards. Please stand by.

Inside the Business of Selling Human Body Parts

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 13:49:45 -0500

Inside the Business of Selling Human Body Parts

Underground Caverns Keep Things Cold, Safe… and Secret

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:19:41 -0500

Underground Caverns Keep Things Cold, Safe… and Secret

"From the raw ore of WIRED Magazine, Will Hindmarch smelts two tales of confused identity, of AI and..."

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:19:00 -0500

“From the raw ore of WIRED Magazine, Will Hindmarch smelts two tales of confused identity, of AI and aliens and definitions. Like their source material, they go down smooth but set your thoughts teetering over the boundary of the future.”

- Kenneth Hite, author of Tour De Lovecraft: The Tales and Trail of Cthulhu.

How a Remote Town in Romania Has Become Cybercrime Central

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 15:58:19 -0500

How a Remote Town in Romania Has Become Cybercrime Central:

“’Were you sent by Barack Obama?’ he asks. I say that I wasn’t, and everyone but me lights cigarettes.”

— from the article by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed The Pharmaware Rep! It was a nice little bite-sized read, yet the characters were interesting and the story was well paced. I read it with Kindle for PC; will you continue to release your stories for Kindle?

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:00:07 -0500

Thanks very much! My plan right now is to release the stories as PDFs and Kindle files for the foreseeable future. There’s demand for the Kindle editions (from readers) and for the PDFs (from me—they give me little design exercises to work on), so those are the formats I’ll focus on going forward, I think. They’re the two formats that I do most of my electronic reading in, anyway.

Thanks for asking.

Organized Crime, The World's Largest Social Network

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:42:43 -0500

Organized Crime, The World's Largest Social Network

The Pharmaware Rep in .mobi Format

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:22:44 -0500

The Pharmaware Rep in .mobi Format:

Click above or right here to get “The Pharmaware Rep,” the first story in Wired Tales issue #1, in Kindle-friendly .mobi format.

This is an experiment, to make sure that my formatting works, so please forgive any irregularities in the text. Future stories will be available in more formats, I hope. Thanks for reading!

About Issue 1

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:02:00 -0500

As it says inside issue #1, this is a lark—a fun exercise that I’ve set down to challenge myself. The challenge: write a story or two based on every issue of Wired magazine that comes out in 2011. Some stories will be weird fiction, some will be speculative, all will stem from the ideas stirred up by the most recent issue of the magazine. It would be wrong for me to not also mention Weird Tales, the excellent fiction magazine, which is also an obvious influence on this project.

This first time out, I was especially wary because I was telling a story in a new way for me—the Stephen King way. “The Pharmaware Rep” started with a small idea (treating mental illness for artificial intelligence) that lead to what you read in the story. The thing is, I didn’t outline it, I didn’t decide in advance what it would be About. I just dug the fossil of the story out of the ground, revealing it as I went, like King talks about in On Writing. This was unusual for me and great fun. I hope it’s fun to read, too.

If you have particular questions about the project or the stories, you’ll find a button at right that lets you send such questions. I reserve the right to ignore questions, obviously.

I should say something about the design of this first issue: It’s not there yet. I erred on the side of simplicity this time out because someone told me that fiction should be laid out modestly, with fewer distractions on the page. I remain uncertain about that, but the time I had budgeted for this issue was running out, so I went with a simpler layout.

Anyway, as of this writing the February, 2011, issue of Wired has just arrived, so it’s time to start thinking of a new story already. Time to let this issue go.

That is, after all, another lesson to learn from this project. It’s not just about writing stories, but about finishing them, parting with them, and moving on to the next one. Otherwise I’ll fret and fidget and revise a story for far too long. So, there’s that.

Thanks to the beta readers and perusers for this issue. Thank you for reading. See you next month.

—Will Hindmarch

Download Issue 1

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:39:00 -0500

Download Issue 1:

Issue 1 is a PDF (1.2 MB) containing two stories: “The Pharmaware Rep” and “You, Invader.”

“Pills,” Shawn Oster, 2010. (As found on Flickr.)

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:19:00 -0500

“Pills,” Shawn Oster, 2010. (As found on Flickr.)

Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:01:17 -0500

Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness:

The struggles over the DSM V, from Wired 19.01

A Report on the Format

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:05:00 -0500

Will: Individual issues of Wired Tales are available as PDFs.
Will: This site contains snippets of stories, links to inspiring articles, quotes of interest from the inspiring issue, and other items associated with the individual stories.
Will: Each issue features an about-the-issue blog entry and, if they come in, I may answer questions about the individual stories here on the site.

"And yet, because the bots’ behavior isn’t based on human thought processes, we are often..."

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:03:00 -0500

“And yet, because the bots’ behavior isn’t based on human thought processes, we are often powerless to explain their actions.”

- Steven Levy, “The A.I. Revolution,” Wired 19.01

A Note on Affiliation

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:32:00 -0500

Will: This is just a short note to clarify that Wired Tales is not officially endorsed by, or affiliated with, any other magazine or publication.

Weird Tales

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:09:48 -0500

Weird Tales:

Being the home of Weird Tales magazine.

Wired Magazine

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:08:04 -0500

Wired Magazine:

Being the home of Wired magazine.

"You left that house knowing the worst had happened. You’d been found out. Soon everyone on..."

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:02:00 -0500

“You left that house knowing the worst had happened. You’d been found out. Soon everyone on this planet would be looking for you.”

- from an earlier draft of “You, Invader”