Dan Sinker’s Cellstories project is finally live, and it’s very cool. He describes it as “a daily dose of awesomeness”, which is pretty spot-on. The premise is simple: a short story, delivered to your fancy phone, on a daily basis. Only cell phones, mind you: by wrestling web content away from the tyranny of distraction of the web browser and its endless distracting tabs, Dan’s inserting a bit of magic back into the experience of reading.

I’m honored that my story “Life on Mars” is second up to bat during Cellstories’ launch week: it’ll be visible from your iPhone/iTouch/gPhone/iClone today (Wednesday, September 2nd) and again this weekend. Head over to Cellstories on your phone to read it. If you’re without a fancy phone with a decent web browser, you can listen to me reading the story on this podcast.

The service has been getting a ton of great press, including from Publisher’s Weekly, the Chicago Reader, Reuters, and the WBEZ Chicago Public Radio blog.

Also very exciting: I’ve been invited to join Serendipity Theatre Collective’s 09-10 season of the 2nd Story storytelling cycle. I’ve long been an admirer of their work, and I can’t wait to collaborate with the prodigiously talented writers and directors already involved in the project.

In other news: I interviewed Nathan Maxwell of Flogging Molly about his new solo project for the newly-launched Verbicide Magazine (which looks great,) and am working on a piece about the challenges facing indie publishers adapting to the web for Utne Reader. In-between those projects, I’m rethinking Is Greater Than and have some exciting ideas to re-launch it, and I’m blogging with a number of IGT peeps over at 12 Pt. Plan.

As always, thanks for reading!

I’m going to be reading a (lamentably true) short story about my stint living in Crestline, CA and a late-night run-in with a redneck of dubious intentions for the upcoming season of 2nd Story. I’m a big fan of what they do (see this article I wrote for Gapers Block a few years back) and am honored to work with them. For a very partial preview of the story, check out this song by my friends in the Devil Makes Three which alludes to said redneck run-in.

This may not be a linkblog, but if you’re looking for an ongoing digest of the (IMHO) best of the web, join me over at 12 Pt. Plan. It covers any number of topics, including politics, media, culture, the universe and idiocy, and will be updated many times daily. The best Internet of the day, with short, often rude, commentary. Think of it as a really well-curated Digg, except you can’t post to it, and its target demographic is not misanthropic 16-30 year old Best Buy employees and IT guys who fall to sleep reading the Fountainhead on their Kindle. So, really, absolutely nothing like Digg.

Not much to report for now, just a quick news update. This new site is almost completely finished and out of its pre-pubescent ‘beta’ status. I’m working on a number of writing pieces for a few outlets, which I’ll have links to soon, and I hope to put the finishing touches on this new site design within the week. For the time being, take a look at the music page, which includes posts including full-album downloads of a number of the musical projects I was involved in (and all of the compilations I put together,) as well as my new personal blog, which is full of needlessly inflammatory items. There’s also an exhaustive metafeed of items I’m reading and posting to various social media tools, and a cherry-picked archive of articles I’ve written over the past couple of years. Thanks for reading, there’s a ton coming up so check back soon!