HTMLGIANT and its readers analyze Tweets for “tone, theme, synecdoche and narrative arc, among other things.”

The new e-chapbook Supercomputer, containing “four stories of goodness” from Jordan Castro, is now out via Deckfight Press. Get it for free in PDF or ePub format (donations are accepted).

We now have a Tumblr blog acting as a virtual multimedia slush pile. Use it to post stories, videos, comics, text, etc, that you either created yourself or found online. We’ll post 99% of submissions on the Tumblr blog, and the best stuff we’ll republish here, with full credits. You can submit here.

The Great Gatsby in 3D: discuss.

“Words!  Mere words!  How terrible they were!  How clear, and vivid, and cruel!  One could not escape from them.  And yet, what a subtle magic there was in them!  They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute.  Mere words!  Was there anything so real as words?”

From The Picture Of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Do you ever crave poorly-written fiction? If so, why?

I just started a graduate program in creative writing and there’s a lot of talk about The New Yorker. All my professors are either current or former editors of the magazine, or their very good friend is an editor, or they just manage to name drop someone from the publication during the first class.

I subscribe to the magazine, mostly because I feel like as a young writer, I’m supposed to read it.  When I do read it, I happily stumble upon some gem by Gary Shteyngart or Ian Frazier. But honestly, most of the issues go unread.

Apparently every writer is trying to get in there, and if you’re in, you’re it.

Well the holy grail just lost a little bit of its shine. Read more »

YouTube announced on Thursday that it would begin broadcasting major Hollywood movies and TV shows in addition to its user-created content, a move no doubt made to better compete with major online video provider Hulu. Which is great, but my only concern is, with all the hoopla over the Hollywood content, will the grassroots content remain as popular? Will users choose to spend their time watching big studio-made TV shows instead of kittens inspired by kittens? God, I hope not.