When the Minigrooves project began back in March 2012, I thought that opening a Tumblr account for it was both enough and also the most suitable way to periodically broadcast the stories at the original pace of two per week. Then, when I finally published the first volume of the series, that Tumblr account started feeling a bit limited. A few friends also suggested that Tumblr was not exactly the platform where people go in search of stories to read, and while I didn’t entirely agree with them, I started thinking about giving Minigrooves its own space. The more I thought of it, the more it made sense, so a couple of months ago I registered this domain. A WordPress installation on a standalone website is more versatile, and the Twenty Fourteen theme — as you can see — turned out to be quite fitting. I want to thank my friend Grant Hutchinson for his assistance and inspiration in choosing the minigroov.es domain. I like short URLs, and this is certainly more memorable, and more personal, than minigrooves.tumblr.com

Welcome

Here we are, then. I’ve tried to make navigating the site a simple, straightforward job. The main pages containing essential information are all listed in the navigation bar above. On the left sidebar you’ll find the most recent posts and stories. In the footer, a few testimonials and thank-yous. I’ve changed the default font for this theme and opted for a couple of typefaces that should be more suitable for reading my stories. They are Vollkorn by Friedrich Althausen for the text, and Miso by Mårten Nettelbladt for titles and subtitles. The Twenty Fourteen WordPress theme is also optimised for tablets and smartphones and should make browsing this site easier if you’re using such devices.

A change in the way stories are broadcast

Up to now, all the minigrooves published online have remained online and available to read even after publishing the first volume as an ebook. I decided to keep things this way because, among other things, it was a quick way to show new interested readers what the project was about, and see whether they liked my writing style, the various story themes, and so on. Minigrooves’ Volume 1 contains a few nice extras — bonus stories, commentary and notes by yours truly, ‘alternate takes,’ and so on. This way, even those people who followed the stories during their ‘airing’ period, or discovered them online afterwards, would find something of value by purchasing the ebook.

But by now, at the time of writing, almost a year has passed since I published the first 42 stories, so I decided to pull them. If you want to have a look at some of them before purchasing the ebook, you can download a sample on the iBookstore with three full stories.

I’ve also come to think that, if Minigrooves‘ airing model wants to resemble the way TV series are broadcast, the stories I publish online while a cycle (or ‘season’) of Minigrooves is ongoing should have a more transient nature. Therefore, from now on, only the five most recent stories will remain available to read here. As soon as a new minigroove is published, the oldest of the five will disappear. I think this should keep things more interesting until a new volume of short stories is finally published.

Enjoy, and Thank you.