I love short stories.
I actually always have, once we actually started reading short stories written in the twentieth century; making me read shit like “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and “The Minister’s Black Veil” as hardly conducive to getting teenaged Greg to sit still long enough to read one. I did read short stories in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents books my grandmother always had around, but that also kind of gave me a stilted view of short stories and what they were supposed to be; I thought stories always had to end with a jolting twist or surprise in order to, well, properly work as a short story. I still have a tendency to try to write stories inside that box, with the final paragraph or sentence essentially changing everything that came before it1; Daphne du Maurier also wrote her short stories this way, too. But when we finally moved on to more modern stories in high school–William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill”–I was enthralled–but also, these stories also come with a big twist at the end. It’s something I still struggle with, and those kinds of stories are also harder to write, I think (yes, making it harder on myself like always). But I do love short stories, even though I often find them to be more difficult to write than novels (they actually are different kinds of writing). It does seem weird to me that I am close to finishing my fourth collection of short stories, yet here we are.
I was asked to be to be the judge for the Saints & Sinners short story contest this year, which was a bit of a shock at first, because usually it isn’t someone who is primarily known as a crime writer. I also don’t consider myself to be a terrific short story writer, either (maybe my insecurity about my short stories will go away now that I am getting closer to feeling normal–for me–than I have in at least five or six years), but on further reflection, I have edited a ridiculous amount of anthologies, I read a lot of short stories, and I’ve always been a fan of short stories and a huge admirer of those who write them well (looking at you, Art Taylor, Barb Goffman, John Floyd, and your incredible peers), so it does kind of make sense in that regard. I’ve also been an editor now for almost twenty four years, so there’s that, too.
I don’t remember the last time I read stories just to score them and not worry about how to put them together as an anthology, which is an entirely different way of reading and evaluating stories–and it’s actually much easier; I can just say what my scores are and be done with it. I’ll also have to write the introduction to the anthology for next year’s Festival.
But the deadline looms!
You can click for more information here. The deadline is October 1!
- I did this in my stories “Keeper of the Flame” and “Housecleaning,” and probably a lot more times than that–those are the two that come to mind. ↩︎
Queer and Loathing in America 