What Is 'Ink Stained Fingers'?

Oh, dear reader…

It has been a while, hasn’t it? I am sure many of you will agree when I say that this year has been a rough one. But we keep on going and striving and aiming high, don’t we, despite the lows and the hard times?

Well, it pays off eventually, I promise!

Allow me to explain. So many things are happening at The Drama Merchant, and we are very pleased with the directions we are taking. Let me fill you in.

A few months ago, Nate and I sat down and brainstormed about a new way to reach out more, while utilising our resources in a new different way. Well, not really new… Following the tradition of taking something old and adapting it to our times, like The Radioplay Hour, we are adjusting the concept, this time to the written media.

Ink Stained Fingers is the product of that fruitful day. I will be writing serials and releasing them weekly. It will mainly be short stories - within three or four entries - giving you a full story per month. We took the idea from book serialization in the 19th century and the start of the 20th century.

A serial novel is a work of fiction that is published in sequential pieces called instalments - at The Drama Merchant, we will call them entries, to emphasize the digital media. Serialized novels were traditionally published by literary magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals. In the 1800s and early to mid-1900s, serialization was an immensely popular form of publishing. After first publishing in serial format, many authors would revise the work before publishing it to be sold as a complete novel.

Many works from that era are now unforgettable classics and inevitable must-reads. Pillars of literature such as: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1870), Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1881), The War of the Worlds by HG Wells (1897), Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934), as well as And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939), were all originally published in serial format.

We came up with the name ‘Ink Stained Fingers’ during that fateful brainstorm. We wanted something that readers, writers, and really any creative person, would appreciate and relate to.

You see, at that time, I was going in and out of writer’s block. And then that lack of inspiration, motivation and confidence invaded my acting career and my personal life. Living far away from my loved ones, feeling like a failure with all the rejection and mishaps in my professional life… I don’t think I need to expand too much on the details. Everyone of you reading me has been through similar situations I’m sure, especially with the numerous consequences the C-word that shall not be spelled has brought with it.

So for the name, we really wanted something that could be taken literally and figuratively. The stains are not only the ones I get on my fingers after having spent the whole day writing, they represent all traces of creativity. The paint in your hair, the soil on your pants, the calluses on your hands. They also represent the hardships we go through when we put something out in the universe. Pouring our hearts and souls onto any project, no matter what it is, is both freeing and dreading.

So yeah, basically, Ink Stained Fingers is a platform where I pour my heart out, to you, dear reader. I’ll put something out in the universe, a little bit of myself, over and over again. To feed my creative self, and, I hope, to entertain you.

The first serial is called The Man In The Mirror, a horror/creepy story to celebrate Halloween. It is the story and thoughts of a war veteran who suffers from PTSD since his return from battle.

Its first entry will be up from 7am tomorrow (Monday 18/10/21). Register your interest here to be notified and start reading as soon as the entries come out. As it is already halfway through October, I will have to catch up by releasing the entries twice weekly, but starting in November, I will be publishing once a week.

We decided that the serials that will be published to celebrate a holiday will be free to read in their entirety. The Holiday Specials will include Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s day, and many others. The serials released in between the Holiday Specials, while still being widely entertaining I assure you, will require - you guessed it - a membership. If you like The Man In The Mirror, and would like to read the next serial, help support our team at The Drama Merchant, including myself, by paying the $1 fee for the entire November serial.

For Christmas, the December serial will be free as a Holiday Special. Come January, the serials will be released at $1 per entry, or as general membership of $2.50 a month, with four entries a month. The membership will allow you exclusive and complete access to all previous serials. As free serials, all Holiday Specials will be available for non-members.

I hope this all makes sense to you. In the meantime, come back tomorrow after 9am to read the first entry of the chilling story of The Man In The Mirror. I am both ecstatic and terrified for you to read it. It will be the first time I let anybody who is not a close friend or family read my creative writing. For some reason, I keep my creative writing much closer to my heart than my non-fictions… Go figure.

But anyways, I wish you good reading and crossed all my fingers and toes that you like it.

Write to you soon, dear reader.

Written by Julia Mesrobian