Having looked over more of the stories that I plan to gather together into a collection I’ve concluded that meeting my self-imposed deadline of year’s end will require winning the lottery so I can devote all my time to writing, a miracle on the level of something that would make for a snazzy short story or some combination thereof.
The main problem is that although I have a lot of completed stories, they are not finished. Most are first drafts and a number of them are rough first drafts or simply reflect a level of writing quality that I feel falls short of what I am capable of now. Why toss a bunch of mediocre stories into a collection? That’s not going to make for good dust jacket quotes. “From the author that brought you the so-so collection 10 Pairs of Shorts comes his latest average novel!”
Instead of mildly freaking out about this as I once might have, I’ve adopted a more sanguine attitude. The collection will continue to be worked on regularly but I’m no longer going to pressure myself with the arbitrary deadline of December 31, 2013. Besides, everyone will be drunk that night and won’t want to read, anyway.
Going forward I’m going to work on the collection at a more relaxed pace, dive back into the next draft of The Ferry and start doing the prep work for my NaNoWriMo 2013 novel, which will, I promise*, be a spectacle to behold.
It’s time to update the progress on putting together my short story collection–which I still plan on self-publishing before year’s end, less than four months from now. Ho ho.
Although I haven’t winnowed down the final group of stories I expect to have at least twenty ready to go. As of today I have five in a state I consider complete so I’m about 25% there. The remaining stories require everything from light edits to Maybe In the Next Collection.
The five completed are:
The trio of Chicago 8 superhero stories. The tone in all of these is very silly:
The Cobalt Sensation
The Chicago 8 vs. Armageddon
The Chicago 8 vs. Time
Plus:
Cervidae (Lovecraft homage)
Slice of Life (light modern day SF fare)
I’m now mulling over the next two or three to edit and then I’ll dive back into one of the unfinished stories to really get the ol’ creative juices flowing in the lead-up to National Novel Writing Month in November (also I’ve always found the idea of ‘creative juices’ kind of gross. What are they even meant to represent? It sounds like something you’d buy in a can).
I’m still thinking about a good title for the collection. I remain partial to 10 Pairs of Shorts or something similar. When I look over my body of work there is not a lot of Grimdark material so the light tone of the title shouldn’t be in conflict with the tone of the majority of stories. Even the horror stories are often more whimsical than not, even when people are getting killed. Especially when people are getting killed.
Among my many books, you’ll find a pile of short story collections and anthologies. I’ve just added two more today–Flights Volume 2 and 20th Century Ghosts, a collection from Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. Because I suck at recalling details of short stories later on (I’m good with the broad strokes but always amazed by people who can recall the most subtle of storytelling nuances years later) I thought I’d start offering mini-reviews of short stories as I read them.
The current collection I’m working through is called Dark Delicacies. It is modestly sub-titled “Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World’s Greatest Horror Writers.”
Ray Bradbury, “The Reincarnate”. I actually read this story months ago and don’t recall the details (see what I mean?) but leafing through it quickly, it’s written in second person, so everything is about you. You talk to her, you go there, you do this. I have never liked the second-person POV for fiction, it just rings wrong, as if the story is being dictated instead of simply unfolding for you. Sorry, Ray!
Lisa Morton, “Black Mill Cove”. A straightforward suspense tale in which a man and wife go camping and have an argument. The man heads off to the cove in the title to catch some abalone, hoping a full haul will help patch things over with his wife. As he threads his way into the difficult-to-reach tide pools, he comes across what he thinks are the remains of a shark attack. It turns out to be more sinister than that, and he faces a life or death struggle before the twist ending. No spoilers here but suffice to say this is a nicely presented tale o’ terror.
Whitley Strieber, “Kaddash”. A heavy-handed satire that imagines an alternate America after “Obliteration Day” in which a nuclear attack strikes Washington, leading the country to a full conversion into a Christian theocracy. The main character is a warden at a Texas prison who oversees executions of secular humanists and other troublemakers. This is completely over-the-top stuff and is presented as such knowingly, contrasting the ultra-religious fervour of the populace against the banalities of everyday life–shopping at Walmart, rooting for the high school football team. It’s a serviceable piece, but I felt it could have been funnier and still made its point. Still, it had Fox paying $11 million to broadcast executions, so there’s that.
Robert Steven Rhine, “The Seer”. This is a classic Twilight Zone tale, complete with twist ending in which a man can foresee the (inevitably) terrible ways people will die, including his own. The story is sad and funny, and there is some suspense in seeing whether the protagonist can cheat his own fate.
D. Lynn Smith, “The Fall”. A story told in the present tense about a boy and his family who are apparently being attacked or hunted by demon-like creatures that can assume human form. This one felt a bit rote to me and features people behaving in ways that serve the plot but are not necessarily believable–a big pet peeve of mine. The ending is especially unsatisfying, as the boy simply does not act in a way that has been credibly built up prior.
F. Paul Wilson, “Part of the Game”. An extremely racist cop threatens to bring down a horde of detectives on the illicit activities in Chinatown unless he gets a 50% cut of the illegal gambling revenue. “The Mandarin”, through the haltingly-spoken English of his representative, rejects the threat and the cop finds himself sleeping with a very poisonous–and pregnant–millipede. As the poison begins working through his system, the cop finds himself indeed “part of the game.” The ending is nicely satisfying, though I felt the racism was depicted in a cartoonish manner that was unnecessary.
Roberta Lannes, “The Bandit of Sanity”. I didn’t care for the title of the story, since the presumed “bandit” doesn’t really come off like one. A well-heeled psychiatrist begins to show symptoms of what he first thinks is some kind of mental disorder, possibly even multiple personalities, leading to a Jekyll and Hyde-like life. As he realizes an old case has literally come back to haunt him, the story works toward a reasonably predictable conclusion. This is not really a bad thing, as it works. My biggest complaint is how brand names are thrown around like excerpts from a James Patterson novel, as if we need them as reminders of how successful the guy is. Yes, he has Donghia chair. Oh, look, he’s sitting in his Donghia chair again and has Hugo Boss slacks. WE GET IT.
Brian Lumley, “My Thing Friday”. The lone survivor of a spaceship crash discovers he is on a planet inhabited by a group of interlinked and intelligent species he comes to call The Pinks. Some are winged, some are quadrupeds, some are biped and more humanoid. They have a great reverence toward the dead and the survivor’s journal chronicles his efforts to understand them, in particular, one that seems to follow him around as he ekes out a living on this strange world. Things turn stranger indeed as he better understands The Pinks. I quite liked this one. Told in the first person, Lumley captures a whimsical tone that remains believable, right to the disturbing finale.
Nancy Holder, “Out Twelve-Steppin’, Summer of AA”. A pair of middle-aged rock stars who happen to be cannibals try to “go straight” by attending AA. Despite the premise, it’s not quite as funny as it sounds and the ending is a bit left field. Still, a breezy read.
