March 5th – The All-Or-Nothing Days – Nick Harkaway

This is the first story in ‘100 Stories for Haiti,’ a collection of stories donated by authors to raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake. The story deals with the mythologising of a gangster figure, Marlon Agonistes, into the benevolent face of organized crime who ‘enforces’ a safe community. The unnamed narrator telling the story from a distance strengthens this sense of myth-making and at its end provides us with only one possible ending for the Marlon Agonistes. Particularly liked the controlled perspective of the narrator’s voice in this.

March 6th – Impact – Dan Powell

I know its a cliche, an author getting hold of publication featuring one of his own stories and flicking straight to it. I re-read Impact this morning in the e-pages of ‘100 Stories for Haiti.’ The story was inspired by a real life news story here in Germany about a meteorite impact involving a young boy. The structure was inspired by various flash fiction, most notably Tania Hershman, who has written a number of pieces of flash fiction featuring large jumps of time from one event to the next. I wrote ‘Impact’ as an exercise in trying out that kind of flash fiction and was really pleased with the results. It’s not my longest story but it is one of my favourites. I plan to return to Sam for a longer piece as I know he has more to his story than the bookends I provide in ‘Impact.’