Wait. What is this? Briefly, please.

I'm selling a number of 3000-word (and potentially longer!) short science fiction/fantasy stories or scenes, inspired by prompts, for $30 each. These funded scenes will become part of the Shared Worlds canon, and the first ten purchased scenes will each be accompanied by a sketch by Oakland-area artist Davin Yant. The purchaser will receive the original sketch on a postcard.

This will raise funds for the Foundations educational system, a San Francisco Bay Area group focused on community-building, personal development, education, and safety within the Alternative Sexuality and Diverse Genders and Sexualities communities.

Author, who are you?

I'm an author and editor of short science fiction and fantasy, with a number of professional publications, including appearances in various "Year's Best" compilations. You can read almost all of my short fiction for free online, and decide whether or not what I'm doing works for you.

So tell me about prompting. How does that work?

You buy one of the stories/scenes, and I'll contact you via the email address you provide so that you can give me a prompt. Then I'll write the story/scene, send it to you, and post it in the Shared Worlds section of my website. I hope to have all of these written by the end of June, though it may take longer than that; if it does, I'll endeavor to keep you updated via email.

Prompts can be whatever you like, with a few caveats, within the realm of legality. (So, no, you can't ask me to write in someone else's fictional universe, unless you also get me permission from the rightsholder.) "Mars colonists make first contact with aliens after an extinction-level event on Earth" could be an example, as could "Midwestern Gothic riffing off The Erl-King", or just something like "Let's see some nontraditional family structures, plus superheroes".

I reserve the right to refuse any prompts, though I hope not to exercise that right. I also reserve the right to take prompts in whatever direction inspiration takes me, even if that direction isn't what the prompter imagined, and I fully expect to exercise that right, because I'm a contrary, contrary being :P.

Additionally, you can't prompt for stuff in universes I've already written, unless those universes are already part of the Shared Worlds canon, whether finished and posted or requested in a previous prompt call. Feel free to scan over the previous prompt call as well, for an idea of how the prompting/writing exchange looks.

All rights remain with me as the author, but stories and scenes will be released under the Shared Worlds license - which you can read at the end of this big ol' block of text.

Okay, and what do I get if I pay you? And why $30?

If you buy a prompt for $30 (USD), you will get a minimum of 3000 words of fiction inspired by your prompt. This could be a short story; it could be a complete scene in a potential short story or novel. You may get more than 3000 words. You may get substantially more, depending on how the mood strikes me and how engaged I am with the universe of the prompt response. But 3000 words is the guaranteed minimum.

$30 for 3000 words works out to 1¢/word, which is lower than professional rates for this kind of writing. The reason I'm setting the price here is threefold:

1. I'm hoping that it'll be an accessible price point for people, because I want the barrier for engagement to be low.
2. I actively want to build up more works in the Shared Universes canon, so it helps to have a low barrier for entry.
3. These prompt responses are unlikely to be as fleshed out, structured, and polished as a complete short story would be.

For this fundraiser, I'll release these stories/scenes into the Shared Worlds canon, which allows authors to write and sell derivative, transformative works (including fanfiction) based on the stories, so long as they release them under a similarly permissive license. My eventual hope is to create a body of works which can offer people the community benefits of a fandom while still nurturing and encouraging a culture of rewarding creative folk for their work.

What's this Foundations thing you're raising money for?

The Foundations educational system is a three-tiered system in the San Francisco Bay Area. Growing out from the Leather and BDSM communities, it also facilitates learning about community development, history, and resilience; health in intimacy and personal responsibility; personal authenticity and growth; and stewardship – among many other things. Foundations itself is the 101 level of the system, and offers donation-based, once-a-week classes in everything from Leather history to basic flogging; from managing community diversity to fire play. Students of Foundations in good standing may be invited to the higher educational tiers, which offer a much stronger emphasis on history, community service, and personal development.

As an asexual person, I've always appreciated the BDSM community – the good parts of it, anyway; the parts I've been fortunate to find – for its recognition that sex is one way in which people can be intimate, not a sine qua non of intimacy, nor a convenient shorthand for intimacy. This is a community in which nonstandard expressions of intimacy don't meet immediate suspicion or dismissal. Let me tell you, from my Western acculturation, this is a rare gem.

Everyone who comes into contact with the Foundations educational community gets something different out of it. I've gained, among other things, a community which supports me and encourages me to find my own growth and authenticity – and this fundraiser is one small way of paying back into that.

And you mentioned that we could take a look at the Shared Worlds license?

Certainly! Here it is:

Works in the Shared Worlds series by An Owomoyela are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Derivative, transformative creative works, including but not limited to fanfiction and fanart, are exempt from the non-commercial clause, provided that they are released under an identical license (CC-BY-NC-SA) which includes this exception.