Thanks to Wil Wheaton for turning me toward Ficlets, a really fun place to play. Ficlets is a website that indugles in "collaborative short fiction." The brains behind the mayhem is John Scalzi.

The idea is this: you write a short fiction and post it to the site. Then others can read your work, comment on it, or if they choose, they can write a "prequal" or a "sequal" to your story. All kinds of various story lines can then develop as people add to your work.

Did I mention your story had to be short? You only get 1,024 characters.

On the site you can write prequels and sequels to stories from other writers, or just comment on their work. It's a lot of fun, actually.

I submitted my first "ficlet" tonight. Here's a glimpse of my first story:

"I trailed him to a bookstore in Tucson. He was wearing a sweater vest made of wool for some reason. He sat there looking like a statue, a cane resting between his legs like a third appendage hanging below his waist. He was reading a Time Magazine, the issue about the new iPod that Apple just released.

I did not care because I was sent to track him down and kill him."

To read the whole story, go here.