Tag Archives: short stories

Creative Writing

Advent Ghost Stories: Her Husband’s Tree

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The tree had always been her husband’s thing. They had fewer ornaments now — glass orbs shattered, some shards still on the floor. But his lights still twinkled. 

“We haven’t seen Randall in so long. How’s he doing?” 

He died December 2020, before putting up the tree, and she couldn’t manage it herself. But as rigor mortis set in, she realized she could have both tree and man. She made her traditional cookies, set out pine-scented candles, and there was Randall with ornaments, lights, and Santa hat topping — her forever tree. 

She gave her standard reply. “He doesn’t get out much.”  

This 100-word short short story is a contribution to Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghost Storytelling Fest. Read a description and other entries on I Saw Lightning Fall.

Photo by Matthieu Comoy on Unsplash

Fiction, Reading

‘Renegade Swords III’

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This is not a review, but a promotion. I have a story in the recently released anthology, Renegade Swords III. I was approached by the compiler, who paid me a small fee for rights to the story. It was originally published long, long ago in Weird Tales (I was delighted to get into Weird Tales, once upon a time the home of Robert E. Howard’s Conan).

The story is called “Magic’s Price.” It’s about a wizard, berserkers, and a bereaved husband. I know nothing about the other stories, or the authors. But my story alone makes the book worth having. It goes without saying.

Had a melancholy reading experience today. I picked up a bargain e-book, and it started out really well. The prose was excellent, and I liked the characters. I was interested in them. The story drew me in.

Then I came up against the Agenda (or, as you may prefer to put it, my bigotry). The central problem of the story involved a homosexual being blackmailed, back in the early 1950s.

I always cringe when they bring in “gay” themes. Aside from my beliefs on sexual morality, male homosexuality gives me the willies. I think that’s true for all “straight” (what we used to call normal) men, if they haven’t been brainwashed. But I could put up with it as a realistic plot element.

However, that wasn’t enough for the author. He had to make it an issue. Had to preach repeatedly on the importance of normalizing homosexuality, of bringing it into the mainstream.

So, sadly, I put the book aside unfinished.

But it was good enough that I think I ought to at least mention it here: Murder by the Book, by Eric Brown. As I mentioned, the writing was very good. You might enjoy it, if you’re more enlightened than I am.

Fiction

Found in Anthologies

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John Wilson writes about a couple story anthologies rescued from a library trash heap:  Fiction of the Fifties: A Decade of American Writing (1959), edited by Herbert Gold; and Stories from the Sixties (1971), edited by Stanley Elkin. He points out some differences and quotes from their introductory essays, but one thing unites them. “Both of these volumes are haunted by an absence. They are, with a few exceptions, radically secular.” But Wilson recommends one stand out story, which I see is the title of an anthology of its own.

Publishing, Reading

Is a Golden Age of Short Stories Around the Corner?

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According to Chris Power, a golden age of short stories has always been shrouded in a misty past and was on the verge of reemerging.

H.G. Wells thought the short story thrived in the 1890s. H. E. Bates said it was the 1920-30s. William Boyd said 1981 was a great year for the story form everyone secretly loved and read quietly in corner booths with their third beer.

While bitter experience has shown poetry exactly where it stands in the marketplace, and the novel has shrugged off multiple reports of its death and maintained pre-eminence, the short story is continually characterised as the neglected form that will be great again. The funny thing is, when you explore its history you find the perception of a distant golden age, an undistinguished present and a return to glory has always been around: the short story has a problem with reality.

(via Prufrock News)

Fiction

Where Did You Go, Short Story?

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“The dullest short stories I read from the last fifteen years were winners of competitions,” writes Hensher, who sieved through journals, old and new, to source the material for these collections. He characterises the winning stories of contemporary competitions as “present-tense solitary reflections”, their protagonists “lying on their beds affectlessly pondering; major historical events were considered gravely; social media were dutifully brought in to indicate an eye on the contemporary”. It is a mistake to believe that competitions, rather than a system of commissions, payments, circulation and readers, will generate literary quality.

Philip Hensher has compiled two volumes for Penguin’s Book of British Short Stories. (via Prufrock)

Fiction, Reviews

Recapture that Blood Moon Moment

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Last week, perhaps you were caught up in the thrills of seeing the moon turn to blood as a harbinger of the end of the world. Too bad it didn’t, right? That just means you can experience the fun all over again, and a group of short story writers may have you covered in this book about an apocalypse that wasn’t.

You can read the premise of the fauxpocalypse and more from the eleven contributing writers on their website. Briefly stated, a scientist predicted the path of an enormous comet would hit the earth on July 15 of this year, and it really looked as if it would hit us. But no. What do you do when almost everyone in the world believe this time it really isn’t a test? Dip into the book here.

I like the idea of the book, but perhaps gathering stories around the theme of something big that didn’t happen will only get you middling results, especially when the story begins with the anticlimax. As one story says it, “Either way, the world had not ended, so it was time for chores.”

I heard of this book through a writer friend, Dave Higgins. He contributes two stories, and you may find that his contributions are worth the price of the whole, though I also liked Alexandrina Brant’s exploration of faith in her story of a college student who attends what could be Oxford’s last chapel service.

Creative Writing

Windy Street Halloween Writing Prompt

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Here’s a bit of creative writing fun we can have for the last half of October, the approach to Halloween. Look at this photo from Carlos Miguez Macho of someone walking in the street. (I don’t believe I would be permitted to display the image here.) Then write a few sentences, a momentary scene based on the photo.
I suppose I should start, but look at the photo before reading the submissions. Continue reading Windy Street Halloween Writing Prompt →