Over the past couple of years, I've been a bit of a sucker for hoovering up short stories on the Internet. I download them, save them, print them off, but rarely read them, until now anyway.
One a day last month..
1st Monday - Paul D. Brazill - Nun with a Gun (Pulp Metal Magazine)
2nd Tuesday - B. R. Stateham - Friday the Thirteenth (Near to the Knuckle)
3rd Wednesday - Joe R. Lansdale - Dirt Devils (link expired - but a FREE STORY every Thursday here!)
4th Thursday - Joe R. Lansdale - Everybody Plays the Fool (link expired - but a FREE STORY every Thursday here!)
5th Friday - Chris Leek - Last Exit (Beat to a Pulp)
6th Saturday - Paul D. Brazill - Dead Pimp in a Trunk (Shotgun Honey)
7th Sunday - Liam Sweeny - Small Miracles (Spelk Fiction)
8th Monday - B. R. Stateham - A Gentleman's Calling Card (Near to the Knuckle)
9th Tuesday - Dietrich Kalteis - The Bigger Man (Dietrich Kalteis Blogspot - The Short Stuff)
10th Wednesday - Dietrich Kalteis - Trinity (Dietrich Kalteis Blogspot - The Short Stuff)
11th Thursday - Paul D. Brazill - The Skull Ring (Pulp Metal Magazine)
12th Friday - Charlie Fish - Death by Scrabble (East of the Web)
13th Saturday - Charlie Fish - The Man Who Married Himself (East of the Web)
14th Sunday - Shirley Jackson - The Lottery (Middlebury.edu)
15th Monday - Col Bury - The Writing on the Wall (Thrills, Kills, Chaos)
16th Tuesday - Gordon J. Brown - Tick Tock (CrimeBookJunkie)
17th Wednesday - Neil Broadfoot - Grin and Bear it (Douglas Skelton website)
18th Thursday - Rusty Barnes - Bleeding Man (Full of Crow)
19th Friday - G. J. Brown - Long Before I Fell (Down and Out Books)
20th Saturday - Tobias Wolff - Bullet in the Brain (pov.imv.au.dk/)
21st Sunday - Dietrich Kalteis - A Run For It (Dietrich Kalteis Blogspot - The Short Stuff)
22nd Monday - Paul D. Brazill - The Endless Sleep (Paul D. Brazill website)
23rd Tuesday - Paul D. Brazill - The Last Supper (Blink Ink via Paul D. Brazill website)
24th Wednesday - Paul D. Brazill - A Cold Night in Hell (Paul D. Brazill)
25th Thursday - Roald Dahl - The Landlady (Teaching English Website)
26th Friday - Eric Beetner - A Twist of Noir 159 (A Twist of Noir Blogspot)
27th Saturday - Paul D. Brazill - Bang! (Paul D. Brazill website)
28th Sunday - Paul D. Brazill - A Cold Day in Hell (Paul D. Brazill website)
29th Monday - Paul D. Brazill - Pop! (No link found!)
30th Tuesday - Paul D. Brazill - One Step Beyond (No link found!)
31st Wednesday - Dietrick Kalteis - Other Side of Goodbye (Dietrich Kalteis Blogspot - The Short Stuff)
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Ok - two days I cheated and missed a story, but read a couple the following day.
An enjoyable exercise and one I'll probably repeat later in the year, to clear some of the backlog of accumulated stuff. It would help if Paul D. Brazill stopped churning out the short stuff!
Cheers for checking them out, especially the Blink Ink stuff. I'd forgotten about a few of them. I'll have to try to track them down!
ReplyDeleteNo problem - a few less papers cluttering the house, that'll please my wife!
DeleteShort stories are great, aren't they, Col? And I like PDB's quite a lot. Shorts are, among other things, a great way to decide what you think of an author's work without investing a lot of time in a full-length novel. And there's a lot of good stuff on the Internet.
ReplyDeleteAgreed Margot. I actually managed to read two books of short stories in the month as well as these - one of them from Mr PDB! Very enjoyable.
DeleteClearly a lot of fun you've been having there. I must check some of them out.
ReplyDeletePaul D. Brazill's are well worth the time, as are the ones by Dietrich Kalteis. That said, I enjoyed them all.
DeleteCol – I’ve read some of these. Thanks for the links for the rest.
ReplyDeleteThere's a couple of classics there - the Jackson and the Dahl. The rest are fairly modern. Hope you enjoy what you try.
DeleteThis is good stuff, Col. You are goading me into reading Paul's stories right away. Thanks for all the links. Thirty was the maximum short stories I read in an entire year since blogging. This is a good reading plan, though.
ReplyDeletePrashant, there were quite a range of stories in the bunch, especially length-wise. Some stretched to 7 or 8 A4 pages of prose, a few were flash fiction pieces - 50 word shorties.
DeleteWhich in reading time hardly count, but I enjoyed them all.
Shorts are good when you're short on time. I know I've been actively reading stuff that isn't very long. Interesting excercise to read 30 for 30 -K.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it. I'm a compulsive hoarder (no surprise admitting that) and it was quite cathartic to clear out some papers and enjoy a few different authors.
DeleteWhat a neat idea - well done you. Does that up your stats for the year...?
ReplyDeleteCheers - no effect on the figures. I only count the shorts if they can be classed as a book on their own - however slim and have their own ISBN number and can be bought on the likes of Amazon
DeleteVery cool idea. I would never be able to keep up with it. Good for you!
ReplyDeleteI was tempted to give it another go in October, but it might have come around too soon. Some of the shorts were Flash Fiction pieces, so the time investment on a few days was fleeting.
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