Calliope Stories

Calliope is an upcoming app for stories —written, interactive stories. Short stories, flash fictions, novellas; every week you’ll have access to new stories (as well as our ever-growing library of previous fiction). Works and chapters drop weekly. We introduce every new installment with vibrant and interactive animations. Our goal is to make reading fun. Immersive. Effortless. Fantastical. LET US TAKE YOU ON A DAY-DREAM It’s ok to be a space cadet here Calliope’s interactive animated introductions teleport / crater / parachute / wrestle / plop / hip-check / zap / sucker-punch / tackle / dive-bomb / thwack / enchant / crater / drop-kick / magic your imagination into short written stories. We edit each fantasy so that they don’t pull you out of the world for longer than you want to go —be that two minutes or twenty. Sometimes we revisit stories through multiple installments (punctuated novellas); other times we get in, tell a story, and get out of that universe in under two minutes (flash fictions); but most of the time we spend about ten to twenty minutes telling a single self-contained tale (short stories). READ WHEREVER, WHENEVER, WHATEVER, FOR HOWEVER LONG YOU WANT In color We love reading. But reading today is tricky because other visually striking apps on your phone are designed to steal your attention away from black and white (and utterly magical) text. Calliope levels that playing field by placing a vibrant and captivating animation in front of equally spell-binding writing on your phone. We want reading on your phone to be as effortless as scrolling through whatever other apps you enjoy. WARNING: HUMAN WRITERS AND ARTISTS No robot art here Humans created everything you see on our app, and always will. No matter what. Robots aren’t humans and don’t experience an infinite inner world like we do. Calliope believes art (writing, water coloring, animating, ballerina-ing, Mongolian throat singing, basket weaving, whatever) is only about one human sharing their inner world with other humans. So while we’re looking forward to the day robots remove drudgery from work, we are unambiguously at war with swindlers passing off some robot’s pantomimed humanity as “art”. CONNECT WITH US We built this for you, so please let us know if we can make any part of it better. Really, we want to hear your luminous praise, sizzling rage, or creative rambles through the text portal on our website. And if you’re so inclined, we’re always looking for lurid storytellers, crafty editors, and maniacal artists to work with. BETA VERSION We’re responsibly welding together app payments now, so until that’s ready everything's free. In one or two months we’ll be ready to safely take subscriptions. Until then, we’d love to have you try out what we’ve been working on. CASH & PUTTING FOOD ON TABLES & OUR STUBBORN AD-HATE How we make money and what we use it for Four dollars a month or thirty six bucks a year buys you all our stories. That money helps us feed our artists, duct tape the app, and get people reading more. We also offer a free tier with fewer stories in case you’re not sure about Calliope yet. We only make money through subscriptions, which in our opinion simplifies things a lot. Calliope creates and sells visual stories for a subscription. That’s it. You are not and never will be the product some advertiser pays us to ensnare. Even our free tier doesn’t violate your attention with advertisements.