Buying 100 Stories for Haiti from Amazon?
Greg McQueen, the man without whom 100 Stories for Haiti would not exist, has posted a video on the 100 Stories for Haiti website, detailing what’s what with the Amazon page for the book.Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 24
March 9th – G is For Golf Course – A. C. Tilyer Another letter from ‘An A-Z of Possible Worlds.’ The Golf Course tells the story of an entrepreneur who buys his way into running the local golf course. Once in charge he ups the subs to an amount no one can afford and kicks everyone out. When complaints start he comes up with a plan to ensure he keeps the course to himself while maintaining the appearance of being a fully subscribed club. Some excellent descriptive writing shows the reader the physical mechanics of golf, the action of a golf swing described in minute detail in the opening. The…Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 23
March 8th – F is for Frontier – A. C. Tilyer Another story from ‘An A-Z of Possible Worlds,’ The Frontier is a sweeping story of mercenaries, border wars and betrayal. The narrative style gives the story the feel of an old legend or fable, while the key figure of the tale, The Queen, is an almost tragic figure, destroyed by her own self-importance and naivete. I read this as part of Read an Ebook Week as I have the ebook as well as a physical copy. The ebook of ‘An A-Z of Possible Worlds’ is available from the WHSmith ebook store.Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 22
March 7th – A Failure – Anton Chekhov Another story from The Exclamation Mark, A Failure tells of two parents eager to marry off their daughter to the district school teacher. They eavesdrop on their daughter’s meeting with the teacher, planning to entrap him using a blessing with religious icons that he may not then break. The custom with the icon firmly places the story in the Russian culture of the time yet the structure and dialogue feel contemporary. The story is short enough to be considered a piece of flash fiction and the fast-paced interchange of dialogue and the simple, direct description easily fulfil the expectations of modern readers.…Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 20 & 21
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…Read more
Roadkill – #fridayflash
I don’t rush straight back. Once I’ve seen it, the image sits in my head, lays there, unmoving, like a desktop wallpaper while I set about my morning chores. Washing goes on, the dishwasher is emptied, my ironing pile shrinks by tiny increments as I press the kids’ clothes and all the time the image rear projects itself onto the horribly magnolia walls behind me. I passed it in the car after dropping the kids off. A dead squirrel. A freshly killed squirrel. The russet of its fur looked unbroken, the usual roadkill explosion of guts and blood noticeably absent. It couldn’t have been run over, surely the pressure of…Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 18 & 19
3rd March – Letter From A Drunk To A Long Gone Wife – Jack Marx Read this after seeing the link and responses to the story on fellow Short Story Challenger, Jodi Cleghorn’s facebook note. Definitely a story that will divide opinion. This account of the effects of alcoholism on a young family, through the eyes of the alcoholic husband is a descent into darkness. The events of the story spiral down along with the main character and the reader’s sympathy ebbs away with each paragraph. Fair to say that every reader will finish the story having lost all sympathy for the narrator, the only question is when that happens…Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 15, 16 & 17
Three more stories from A. C. Tillyer’s ‘An A-Z of Possible Worlds’ for the last three days. 28th Feb – C is for Casino Echoes of a Roald Dahl tale of the unexpected here. This is the first story in the collection to use dialogue and again a lengthy intro sets the scene while breaking lots of those pesky rules of contemporary short fiction writing. Great take on the theme of unenlightened self-interest. 1st March – D is for Dormitory Less a narrative this one, more a piece of descriptive writing. Detailed and very, very charming at the same time as presenting some very repellent, yet sleeping, figures of importance…Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 13 & 14
Some of you may remember me banging on about ‘An A-Z of Possible Worlds’ back in October when it was released. A.C. Tillyer’s quirky box set of 26 interlinking short stories, each autonomous in its own right, sees each story presented as a small booklet, perfect for sticking in a bag or lunchbox to read in a spare five minutes. While I have been dipping in and out of the collection since then, I decided that during this challenge was the perfect time to tackle the whole collection, so I am reading them in alphabetical order. Feb 26th A is for Archipelago – A. C. Tilyer Part travel writing, part…Read more
Barrel Roll – #fridayflash
The car pirouettes in mid-air, appearing as if from nowhere, as if transported via some futuristic technology, teleporting into view above the opposite carriage way, twirling in the air like a wind blown leaf. It spins back to the asphalt and lands catlike on its wheels, stretching across both lanes of the opposite dual carriageway, its bodywork sagging and crumpled, wheels sunk into their arches like tortoise heads. The bonnet is accordioned, disclosing the point of impact, the point at which the car must have collided with the crash barrier? The verge? Another car? We pass at 70 or 80 miles an hour, the crash barrier between us and the…Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 12
All Mod Cons – David Gaffney Busy day today so cheated a little and read a piece of flash from the Aromabingo collection I have been dipping in and out of over the last two weeks. All Mod Cons is very short but very sweet. A prime example of the highly inventive yet simple premise necessary for flash fiction. The central conceit of this story, a myopic man who makes himself a prescription windscreen is so good I wish I had thought of it.Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 11
What Would Bill Hicks Do? – David Gaffney Another great story from a great collection, Aromabingo. The structure of this story is superb, with a suitably vague ending that leaves the reader to decide what happens. Rob, the main character, is a vain stand-up comic who, over the course of the story, slowly reveals he is not quite as cock-sure as he seems. Seriously starting to like David Gaffney’s work. will have to invest in his other collections at some point.Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 10
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? – Raymond Carver Another quality bit of prose fiction from the American master. Again he manages to evoke perfectly that moment in an ordinary life when everything goes down the pan. Ralph’s tiny odyssey through the streets of the town as he struggles to come to terms with his wife’s infidelity has an epic quality in contrast to the mundanity of his surroundings. Two lines that have stuck with me since reading it this morning: ‘He understood things had been done. He did not understand what things were now to be done.’ Simple. Powerful. The other thing that struck me with this story is…Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 9
Signals – Raymond Carver. Found my copy of ‘Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?’ on the shelf, while browsing through a couple of other Carver collections. Flicking through, I realised I hadn’t read the last two titles in this collection. ‘Signals’ is, on the surfce, a simple story about a couple going out to dinner, but Carver, as one might expect, invests every movement and line of dialogue with deep emotional undercurrents. He refuses to tell how the couple feel about each other but the reader is never in any doubt on this matter because of Carver’s ability to show us the characters. The short vignette of the dinner in…Read more
Short Story Challenge – Day 8
Does Anyone Care for You on a Regular Basis – David Gaffney (from his collection, Aromabingo). Another story from this collection (which I have been dipping into on the side, while reading other stories for this challenge) and another corker. There’s a small lull after the excellent opening where I was jarred a bit by an unclear detail that had me flicking back to check something. Not sure if the fault is with me or the story has a weak spot. That said, the remaining three quarters of the story are inspired, the unreliable narrator, an unlikely counsellor, is both likeable and worrying to watch as he tries to help…Read more
Short Story Reading Challenge – Week 1
A few weeks back, Jodi Cleghorn (awesome editor and author) presented a challenge to the readers of her blog, Writing in Black and White: ‘Beginning in earnest next week, (14th Feb) I will be committing to read one short story a day, for a year…Care to join me?’ This looked an excellent way to get through the pile of short fiction anthologies on my bookshelves so I signed up. The following is a rundown of what I read over the first week of the challenge, and the notes I jotted in my writer’s diary. 14th Feb – 16th Feb – a selection of stories from David Gaffney’s collection Aromabingo: Art…Read more
Dan Powell 