storyaday

Here's another website celebrating Short Story Month 2014. It's called StoryaDay.org. If you sign up, you can submit listings for stories you'd like to see get greater exposure, apparently even your own if they have been published by someone other than yourself. This appears to be an ongoing venture rather than just a month of May kind of thing, which is nice.

A Cool Thing to Do-LCRW

I recently renewed my subscription to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, partly in gratitude for it being responsible for my story "The Pirate's True Love" having any kind of life out there in the world at all, but also because it is one of the coolest little zines around, and it is always a pleasure to find it in your mailbox. I received Issue 29 last week, and I have just read the first story, which is written by Jennifer Linnaea. It's called "Smash!" and has a little something to do with sea monsters. The LCRW folks do seem to have a preference for these seagoing tales. It was very good. And short. If you had a subscription you could read it in a few minutes.


So why not get a subscription? They're cheap, and it will make you cool, like me...Yes I am too cool! I mean maybe not before I upped my subscription, but I am now. At least till the subscription runs out.


Okay, getting a subscription to LCRW may not make you cool. But it will make you happy.


For happiness, enter HERE.

Speedboat

I'm getting a bit behind here, but it occurred to me that I can link easily to a couple of story collections I've reviewed in the not too distant past. The first one is Renata Adler's Speedboat, which made something of a splash (sorry) when it first came out. I'd been meaning to read it for many years when a new edition by New York Review of Books' press brought it to my attention again. I'm still not sure if I think it has withstood the test of time or not. Here is my take on it at Escape Into Life.

Flash Jab Drabble challenge

Just in time to be part of my May Short Story Month posts, Jack Bates has announced another Flash Jab drabble challenge. A drabble is precisely 100 words. There's an intriguing photo to give you inspiration. I've submitted a few drabbles to Jack in my day, and he's posted them. So seriously--give it a shot. If I did it, how hard can it be?

Dubliners, the Centenary

I might have been wondering a little what I was going to cook up for day 5 of National Short Story month, but as it turns out, it was handed to me on a plate. Mark O'Connell has written an excellent piece for Slate Magazine on The Dubliners, a hundred years on, as well as Dublin itself, being a writer in Joyce's wake (his Wake?) and other things. Many consider Dubliners as the story collection of story collections, and it would certainly be a good year to read it or reread it. I am hoping to do so myself before the year gets too much older.

Story for Saturday--Paul D. Brazill

Okay, it's Sunday already, but I just remembered an obvious post to do here, which is about Paul D. Brazill's blog. He's quite the promoter of the grittier side of British fiction, but more importantly for our purposes here, he does a Story for Saturday post every, well, Saturday, featuring his own work.


Brazill's stories tend to be VERY gritty but tempered by a dark sense of humor. They would probably range on the side of too gritty for my tastes normally, so be forewarned, but he is such a good writer that I  muster up my courage and plunge in. There's a morality to the Brazill universe--usually-- even if justice tends to come in a little late and a lot harshly. And I think there's a kind of compassion there for people living on the lower end of the economic order, playing the cards they've been dealt the best they know how. Which is not always to say well.


Here, forthwith, "Scopey's Choice".

Sweet With Fall and Fish on Amy Hempel

Sweet With Fall and Fish is another blog that seems to be making the short story commitment this month. The blogger doesn't list his name on the website, or I didn't find it, but if you follow his link to his old website you can identify him. He works at an independent bookstore in Florida and calls himself "a buyer among other things," which in my former life was a role I could have related to. He is going to be posting some of his stories but also recommending short story collections. Today he is writing about Amy Hempel.

Emerging Writers Network on Men Under Water, by Ralph Lombreglia

Probably the main reason I even know of the existence of National Short Story Month is Emerging Writers Network. In recent times, I think the chief factotum over there (and maybe only factotum, period), Dan Wickett, has been a bit busy with other things recently, but I'm pleased to see that he is revving up the website for May. Today he's reviewing an anthology by Ralph Lombreglia and giving you the link to the ebook of the anthology, which is currently on sale. You can find out all about it HERE

And do check in over at Emerging Writers Network throughout the month, as you are likely to find a lot of interesting leads, short storywise.

Oh well, if you insist--prompts

No, I'm not doing prompts this year, but I can direct you to a month of prompts going on at Nano Fiction. Their site is all about flash fiction, but there's no reason you can't adapt them to your own ends...

You're welcome. Don't mention it.

National Short Story month, 2014

Well, May has rolled around again. A couple of years ago, I did a month of writing prompts here during this time for the one or two people who either knew I was doing this or randomly happened upon it. Last year there were a couple of big life events going on in May, so I didn't even attempt it. This year, I'm feeling more ambitious about a writing project I just started on than I am about blog prompts, but I think it might be kind of cool to be thinking about stories and story links all month, and I'll include you in the journey too if you want to check in here.


Let's start with a list of great story collections that I just found at Publisher's Weekly, assembled by the short story writer Carolyn Cooke. It's kind of a classic list, not that it means I've read many of them. The name and title that were new to me was Love is Power, or Something Like That, by A. Igoni Barrett.


I can see right now that I am setting myself up for a fall. I'm supposed to be reading The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. I'm enjoying it, but it is not by any stretch (or shrinkage) of the imagination a short story.