I blogged about this recently and I’ve already got slack with it. I haven’t managed to read a short story every day, but I have managed most days. Here are the things I’ve read this past week or two:
Freefall by Eric James Stone, from Daily Science Fiction. This was a very powerful piece of flash fiction with some great science. I guessed how it was going to go down, but still enjoyed reading it play out. I subscribe to Daily Science Fiction and get a new story in my inbox every day.
Acception by Tessa Kum, from Baggage anthology, ed Gillian Polack, Eneit Press. Excellent near future dystopia of racial profiling and Orwellian mind control. This scored a bunch of award nominations, and totally deserved them. A real must-read.
Trickster by Mari Ness, from Clarkesworld. Very interesting idea and a nice literary style, but a distinct lack of explanation in why things happened the way they did and what for. Not really any story there to speak of, leaving me with more questions than answers, and not in a good way. Still worth a read and others will probably get more from it than me.
The Gateway of the Monster and The House Among The Laurels by William Hope Hodgson. Catching up on a hole in my reading, thanks to Adam Christopher’s recommendation. Carnacki the Ghost-Finder stories, first published between 1910 and 1912 in The Idler magazine and The New Magazine, are classic old school supernatural detective yarns. They’re great fun and well worth a read. I found a free collection in the Kindle store. Bonus.
Valeria by Ian R Faulkner in Murky Depths #16. I have a story, Mirrorwalk, in this issue and finally had time to read some of my contributer’s copy. This story is a dark, violent cyberpunk noir tale. Gritty and clever, and quite disturbing. Not the most original idea, but very well played out with some original twists.
Doorways For The Dispossessed by Paul Haines from The Last Days Of Kali Yuga. The original “backpacker horror” yarn. An excellent exploration of lucid dreaming and its potential dangers with a cool, horrible twist. Paul Haines is an outstanding writer and this is probably the definitive Haines collection. Get it. Now.
I’ll post more updates like this on infrequent occasions. I’ll try to read a short a day, but you know how it is. What have you read lately?
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I think I’m going to have to look into a couple of those over lunch. Thanks for the pointers.
This morning I peeled open my copy of 100 Stories for Queensland. So far so good – 100 short sorted alphabetically by author (already passed ‘B’ – nice one! Although I think I’ve categorised you a bit because I was waiting for something horrible to happen to him). It’s a bit like someone pointing a muzzle-loaded blunderbus full of stories at you and pulling the trigger, because every one is different.
I figure if I knock that over this week I’ll be 3 months ahead in my short a day thing.
Everyone expects me to always write dark stuff now, which I suppose is no bad thing. It means I can still surprise people.
I was invited to write for an anthology called Hope and the story has to have a hopeful conclusion. That was hard, but I did it.