Along the Hudson

Photo by Verina Waldner on Unsplash

One of my ancestors is named Lewis Dudley Deming. He was born in 1820 and spent most of his life on the Hudson River as a boat pilot and captain between Albany and New York City. Though I will never be a riverboat pilot, I can’t help but feel the same draw to the Hudson that Lewis presumably felt. For some reason, my life has led me here, and it’s where my family calls home: the Hudson River Valley.

I’ve spent the past decade of my life either on or around this river. As a result, it provides me with a constant source of inspiration. Some of my best story ideas have come from quiet mornings, exploring or hiking along its banks.

That’s what you’ll receive if you choose to follow my Substack newsletter — my stories from Along the Hudson.

I will be updating this space with stories from my collection of archived fiction and creative nonfiction from my Substack newsletter. To check out my Substack, which has new stories and writing prompts delivered twice a week, please click on this link. If you like the material, I hope you’ll consider signing up.

Thanks so much for reading this. I hope you’ll continue this writing journey with me!

– Justin

Micro 2 Go Updates

I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy.

I wanted to give a quick update regarding my Substack newsletter, Micro 2 Go. Several changes have been made – all good things!

Roughly a month ago I started to create daily writing prompts, and I named this section of the newsletter Prompts 2 Go. These prompts are sent out via email to all subscribers every morning at 7:00 AM (EST). The intended audience is for any writer, at any stage, who is looking for “story starters” or daily writing exercises. My newsletter could also be suitable for English teachers or creative writing instructors – or students!

In addition to the daily prompts, I’m sending out short fiction (or microfiction) twice a week. These stories are sent out at 8:00 AM every Monday and Friday.

If you are interested in checking out Micro 2 Go or signing up, please click here.

Thanks so much for considering. I hope your writing ventures are going well!

All the best,

Justin

Medium and Microfiction

view of floating open book from stacked books in library
Photo by Jaredd Craig on Unsplash

I write a fair amount of content over on Medium.com. Admittedly, I used to post more work during 2019, but I still create weekly writing prompts over at The Friday Fix – and serve as the editor of the publication.

Recently, the publication has been receiving over fifty prompt-based stories on a weekly basis, and somewhere around twenty to twenty-five original works of microfiction. In total, I’m seeing seventy-five submissions roll in every single week. It’s both incredibly fun and daunting at the same time!

As the person behind the scenes doing a lot of the nitty-gritty work, I’ve realized I haven’t been writing as much microfiction lately. It also feels a bit strange to post my own stories on The Friday Fix, which has evolved into a niche community on Medium with almost 1,500 followers – not to mention over 200 writers.

For this reason, I’ve decided to create my own personal publication on Medium called Story Well. I’m in the process of transferring all of my old fifty-word stories from The Friday Fix archives (wiping some cobwebs and grime off them, too) to Story Well in an effort to rejuvenate my love for this genre. Maybe this will get some new eyes on my work, as well.

As I go about this, my plan is to simultaneously share my stories here on my recently polished WordPress site. I’m interested to see if this will bring on new readers. More importantly, I hope to create more fans of the microfiction form of writing. Who knows, maybe by this time next year I’ll have a collection of my very own stories to shop around to publishers.

Hmm…might there be a chapbook in the not-so-distant future? Only time will tell.

Get ready for a wave of microfiction!

Happy writing,

Justin