“Heart of a Champion” takes the reader from the opening credits to the close of an old (fictional) Lassie serial. It is fascinating tutorial for those of us who have absorbed most of our ‘short stories’ in the form of TV shows or webisodes or through other visual media. It demonstrates quite nimbly, how to [...]
Tag archives for short story
[Tuesday Reading Room] Durak By Anatoly Belilovsky
I found this story in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and I loved it. It’s a sci-fi story set on Earth, on the RMS Titanic, to be precise. How can that be a sci-fi/fantasy story? Well, you’ll have to read it to find out. The story takes place exclusively around a card table on the luxury [...]
[Tuesday Reading Room] Orange by Neil Gaiman
One of the things I love about short stories is the way they can play with form. They are, at their best, unpredictable. “Orange” by Neil Gaiman (which I found in the Best American Non-Required Reading 2011 anthology) is a perfect illustration. Written in the form of answers to a police interrogation, the story never [...]
[Reading Room] The Fog Horn by Ray Bradbury
I came a little late to the stories of Ray Bradbury and that’s probably a good thing. I was much too literal as a teenager and probably wouldn’t have known what to make of his fantastic, thought-provoking, stories with their lyrical language. When I did discover his writing, of course, I had my mind blown [...]
[Reading Room] “Goodbye and Good Luck” by Grace Paley
I’ll tell you this up-front: I’m an optimist, a romantic. I like my heroes larger than life and my endings to, well, end. I get impatient with stories that are just like life: a little change here and there, but then they just stop and life goes on. I can appreciate stories like that. I [...]
[Tuesday Reading Room] How We Avenged The Blums by Nathan Englander
This story comes from Englander’s short story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories. The title of the collection made me a bit nervous, I’ll confess. I’m not Jewish and I wasn’t – until last year – American, and I wasn’t sure where Englander was going with that Anne Frank [...]
Reading A Story A Day…For A Year – An Interview
…Reading these short stories has made me realize that it’s a place I can go, a place I should go in my own fiction. …
[Tuesday Reading Room] – The Sellout by Mike Cooper
This story comes from the June 2012 edition of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. It features an unnamed protagnoist who is also the hero of a forthcoming book by the same author, Mike Cooper. This story starts strong, with a clear sense of place and time, not to mention a few hints as to the type [...]
[Tuesday Reading Room] Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
I have a subscription to Storyville, on my iPhone, because I’m a sucker for new business models and digital publishing, and I’m enjoying being exposed to a wide array of stories (old and new) every week. This week’s story, “Gold Boy, Emerald Girl” by Yiyun Li, slowly unfolds the story of a couple, past the [...]
[Markets for Writers] Postcard Shorts
Inspired by a postcard-length short story by science fiction master Arthur C. Clarke, Postcard Shorts accepts stories that are, well, postcard length. (That translates to about 250 words) Pretty much anything goes, as long as it’s not completely devoid of merit (in the Editor’s opinion). The Editor’s decision is final. The copyright for anything you [...]
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