Yesterday during my Daye Jobbe, I tossed in my usual off-handed mention that I met my cousin who works for the Coast Guard when she came to a book-signing I did two years ago. Occasionally, students will pick up on that and ask me during a break or after class what the book-signing was all about, and I get a chance to advertise my book THE FIRFLAKE without feeling like it’s a conflict of interest (advertising my book while doing my Daye Jobbe). No one mentioned it yesterday (which is what usually happens, honestly), so I assumed no one had picked up on it, or if they had they were not interested in hearing more. Today towards the end of lunch, I was back in the meeting room checking email and one of the participants said, “I enjoyed reading your short stories last night.” My immediate answer was, “oh, thanks!” And then I looked at her and said, “Wait. Short stories? Which ones? Where did you find them?” I know I’ve posted one or two here on LJ over the years, but I’m pretty sure I locked those posts. She said, “there were three of them on a website. One of them was about a bank robber.” I’m pretty sure the issue of Willard & Maple magazine that includes my story “Invisible Me” is not available online. “I found them just by googling your name.”
So of course, I immediately googled myself. Sure enough, there’s a link … to the “test run” of the website page my friend EJ Flynn was designing for me. I had given her an author bio and three of my stories (“Invisible Me,” “Navarre,” and “That Happy Kid,” the latter of which has been revised since I sent it to her) to see what the site might look like in final form. I had thought that test page was locked off for only she and I to see, and the project sort of fell through the cracks as she went on to other work and has spent less time designing websites (especially for free as she was doing for me). A month or so ago, my buddy Darrell and I got the actual www.anthonycardno.com finally up and running, with the intention that I’d probably eventually add a Story tab to the site once things were tweaked to where we want them.
So, the question is: should I leave these stories posted / open to being found on her site? Two of the three are unpublished in any kind of print form, and one of those is fairly substantially revised while the other I’m considering revising. I’ve heard that many editors (of print and online mags) will not look at stories once they’ve been on a website of any kind (be it a personal site or a blog like Livejournal or Blogspot). If that’s true, can it hurt to leave these three on the web since they’ve been out here for over a year without my knowledge that they were visible to the general public? Should I move them to my website, leave them in both places, or take them all down? I’m genuinely unsure of the best route to take.
Thoughts are appreciated.