The story “Valley of Time” that will appear next Sunday, March 9th will be the last regular installment of Five Minute Fiction For Free. I say “regular” because I’m not going to stop writing stories, but I’m not going to do it at the rate of once a month anymore, a pace I’ve kept since August of 2012. That’s a pretty good run of what will be consecutive 20 months. I don’t want to offer less than my best and if I start forcing plots and characters onto the page, then it will be less than my best.

As Mark Twain said in describing why he took what amounted to an seven-year break in writing his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “I needed to let the well fill up again.”

I will be posting regularly, however, so please continue to follow me. I’ll ponder, pose, and pontificate as I often have between stories. In fact, I’ll soon have news about my Boots Poffenberger biography as well as some work that is being posted at the Society for American Baseball Research.

I might even post a sequel to “It’s a Grocery Store! No, It’s a Sex Shop! No, It’s Both!” That post, by the way, has been without a doubt my most popular post, and literally gets hits from all over the world on a semi-daily basis. I’m not sure exactly what people are typing into their search engines to find that one. I had to type “sex shop + grocery store + Berryville” before my post appears on the first page of any search result. I don’t know why someone in Kazakhstan is adding Berryville as a key word, but then I don’t know why anyone would search for a “sex shop + grocery store” in the first place. I just wish my fiction had that kind of long-term traction.

In any case, thanks to everyone who has read my work and will continue to share this blog with me. As a bonus, “Valley of Time” is longer than the previously posted stories. It’s more like ten minutes of fiction for free. Enjoy it and AS ALWAYS! please pass along the link to all your friends.

–Austin