"The triumph of Everington’s first novel is that, while hinting at lofty literary precedents, it cumulatively takes on an unsettling voice all of its own." The Guardian
... actually, even less than half. By which I mean, his collection of crime fiction Nowhere To Go is reduced to 86p/99c throughout September (Amazon UK | US).
I don't just mention any old writers on here you know, so consider this the Everington seal of approval.
Like a swan floating on the river, there may not appear to have been much activity here at Scattershot Writing for the last week, but underneath it has been as frantic as anything.
I'm hoping to have The Shelter published in just over a fortnight... and I'm on holiday for half that time. But I'm still on schedule I think: feedback on the trial cover I posted below was pretty positive; some people didn't like the font/text-size but I can play around with that quite easily. I've also had some helpful proof-reading and editing suggestions from a couple of beta-readers, to whom I am inordinately grateful. So things seem to be on track...
In other news, I've answered some questions for Five Question Friday over at Aaron Polson's blog - check out all of Aaron's site if you haven't already. But be prepared to spend some cash when you see how interesting his books look...
Finally, my last post was called Bad Cover Version (rather inaccurately, to be fair). But as it's Friday we could do with some decent tunes - so here's my pick of five great cover versions. (Feel free to let me know your top-five covers in the comments...)
The Flaming Lips covering Can't Get You Out of My Head (Kylie Minogue):
If you're going to cover Kylie, you might as well up the plaintive emotional content while simultaneously wearing furry animal costumes, no?
Laura Marling covering The Needle and The Damage Done (Neil Young):
Marling shows she really is the real deal by going toe-to-toe with Young, and coming out with at least a score-draw.
The Tindersticks covering Here (Pavement):
I can't find a proper link/video for this sorry; I think this might be a live version. Well worth checking out the original (it was a B-side). Proper Nottingham band, Tindersticks:
Radiohead covering Nobody Does It Better (Carly Simon):
Another live one, but unlike the Tindersticks one, this hasn't ever been done in the studio to the best of my knowledge. But it's awesome, obviously.
Taken By Trees covering Sweet Child O' Mine (Guns & Roses):
I love this because it takes a song everyone knows, and makes something completely different out of it.
It's like a later "Tom & Jerry" when the two of them could talk
Like the Stones since the Eighties, like the last days of Southfork.
Like "Planet of the Apes" on TV, the second side of "'Til the Band Comes in"
Like an own-brand box of cornflakes: he's going to let you down my friend.
I've teased about this before, but this is the first official mention: in September I hope to have a new book out. It's called The Shelter and I didn't want to include this story in The Other Room because I didn't think it fitted - although still horror, I think it's a more commercial, traditional horror story than those in that collection. There's a reason for why it's different to my usual stuff, which I explain in the afterword.
Or it would be more commercial, if it wasn't for the length, because The Shelter is - gulp - a novella. (In fact at approximately 15k words some writers would call it a 'novelette' but come on people! We're supposed to be writers, and yet you use such a manifestly ugly, dispiriting word as 'novelette'? For shame!)
Anyway, because of the length of this story, I don't plan to sell it for much above the minimum ebook price point in the foreseeable future, so the cover art will again be all down to little old me. Below you can see the first stab I've made at it; I would be seriously grateful for any and all feedback:
And yes I know, the Pulp lyrics at the top of this post, and indeed it's title (which is the name of the song) don't really relate to the content much do they? Or at all, to be honest, beyond the use of the word "cover".
But they are cool as sin, and sometimes that's all that matters.
We don't believe in superstition here; this is the thirteenth 'In Defence of Short Stories', and proud with it.
Today's guest post come from Tony Rabig - a short story writer who you'd do well to check out. For evidence, see his blog, Notes From The Wrong Side of Sixty, his Amazon author page for a list of his books, and Smashwords where you get a free short story Ghost Writer the description of which I'm sure will be intriguing for any writer (I won't say any more, to force you to go and check it out...)
Tony has helpfully provided links for nearly all the authors and stories he mentions (and he mentions a lot, and good ones); all are to Amazon US.
Take it away, Tony...
You pay your nickel and you take your chances.
And these days, when few people want to take any chances at all with their nickels, it can seem like the short story needs defending. After all, you can get novels for 99 cents -- forty thousand, fifty thousand, maybe even a hundred thousand words or more -- so why shell out that same 99 cents for something that may run well under three thousand words? At first glance that may look like a good question.
Except for the assumption behind it, which is that when buying works of fiction you can measure value received by weight alone.
Reading a story, regardless of length, lets you experience something vicariously. You give yourself over to the author willingly, to have your emotions and thoughts manipulated. The intensity of the experience doesn't depend on the length of the story.
Nobody who's read it forgets Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." There's not a lot that chills the blood the way Stanley Ellin's "The Question" does. If you want your heart broken, stories like Theodore Sturgeon's "The Graveyard Reader" and "Bright Segment" or Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" will do the job nicely. Depending on your sense of humor, stories like John Collier's "Over Insurance" and "Bottle Party" can leave you laughing harder than you did the first time you saw the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup or read Joseph Heller's Catch-22. None of these stories would benefit from being expanded to novel length. The fact that a story is short doesn't necessarily rob it of scope -- in John D. MacDonald's "End of the Tiger" you get a glimpse of the lives of a family, hard lessons passed from one generation to the next, and the realization of the wisdom behind those lessons, and all of it done in under two thousand words as the narrator recalls an evening in his youth when a visitor played a cruel trick on a pet goose; like many short stories, it's a quick sketch rather than an intricately painted canvas, but the intensity of experience is there.
I grew up on science fiction, horror, and to a lesser extent mystery and suspense stories (genres that lived for quite a while as much in magazines, in the short forms, as in novels), so that's where I drew my examples. But the same observation applies to general literary fiction. Earlier posters for this series have already cited Carver, Chekhov and others. Irwin Shaw, Somerset Maugham, Hemingway, John O'Hara, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and many more were as adept at the short forms as the long. The reader who turns away from the short story because of the notion that he's not getting good weight for his nickel is cheating himself.
But that's the attitude of an advocate of the short story. The attitude of someone who never regarded the short story as a bad buy just because it was short.
What's in it for the reader who's used to measuring it all by the pound?
Well, when he lays down his nickel there's a chance he'll be treated to an experience that will stay with him the way a satisfying novel would, and because the story is short, it won't take him nearly as long to read it; he may find himself getting as much or more for his money as he'd get buying a novel. He might also find he's bought a stinker -- it happens. You pay your nickel and you take your chances, but that's as true of the novel as it is of the short story. And there are things possible in the short form that I'd think would be difficult to do as effectively and economically in the novel -- see some of the work of Jorge Luis Borges, for instance, or stories like Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."
Still, there are plenty of readers who will continue to measure by the pound, and no argument is likely to change their minds before the coming of a new vogue for short fiction. Until that time, short stories will remain a hard sell, resisted by some readers and not bringing the writer anywhere near the money that a novel priced at 99 cents might bring.
So why would a writer continue writing short stories? What's in it for the writer?
If nothing else, there's this, from Irwin Shaw's introduction to his collection God Was Here But He Left Early:
"Today you are sad and you tell a sad story. Tomorrow you are happy and your tale is a joyful one. You remember a woman whom you loved wholeheartedly and you celebrate her memory. You suffer from the wound of a woman who treated you badly and you denigrate womankind. A saint has touched you and you are a priest. God has neglected you and you preach atheism.
"In a novel or a play you must be a whole man. In a collection of stories you can be all the men or fragments of men, worthy and unworthy, who in different seasons abound within you. It is a luxury not to be scorned."
I've read some great books recently (plus a few stinkers...) and a number of them were written by fellow indie authors. I know many readers struggle to find the good books in the multitude of indie-books, and many indie authors struggle to find the audience they deserve, so consider this a literary dating service... and best of all, you get to date as many as you like! (Links are to Amazon UK)
Good lord this was good! And I don't mean a good, self-published cheap Kindle book, I mean a good book full-stop. The story is told from multiple perspectives and points of view, and the author has total control over all these voices. The subtitle, "A New York Story" is perfect, because the multiple voices seem like a chorus for the city. Because of these shifts in view point, the book seems initially slightly scrappy, and all over the place, but careful reading reveals every section has a part to play.
The plot itself is strong too, and full of drugs, death, and sex. There's some genuine harrowing and moving scenes, and strong character development (if that's the right word for some of these character's fates). Recommended if you like edgy literary fiction.
An interesting rewrite of On The Road, set in modern day Britain. The author plays on the contrast between the open road of the 50s original, and the traffic-jammed, speed-camera lined roads of nowadays. The titular road leads from London to the north of Scotland, and the two central characters have many encounters, although with a level of disillusionment and bathos not found in On The Road.
The writing throughout is strong and this is worth a read if you like On The Road.
Yes, yes, I've mentioned Iain many times on this blog, and his story Lilies - which is included here. But the praise is justified. The best stories here (for me Sighted, Here Comes The New Way, and the aforementioned Lilies) are those which are the most original, where the author is doing something utterly his own. Some of the others have a more conventional ghost/horror story structure, but always with something new - even if that something is just the clarity and precision of Rowan's prose, which is sparse but strong, and full of memorable little phrases. In particular the depiction of a war-torn city in two of the stories is brilliant.
(The full list of good self-published or independent authors I've discovered I keep updated here.)
It's been almost three months since I started putting up guest blog posts 'In Defence of Short Stories' and this is the first time since then that I've not had any lined up. I expect to have more soon (and readers and writers who'd like to do a piece should feel free to get in touch) but consider this week an Intermission.
But speaking of short stories, I was reminded of a (very) short story when 'talking' to the writer Vivienne Tuffnell on Twitter, who needed something short and spooky for a class she was teaching. I first read it in the splendid anthology Black Water, which is shamefully out of print (I notice new copies are going for close to 75 quid - I got mine from a charity shop for 50p...!)
It's a huge anthology of creepy, scary stories, from writers both inside and outside the horror genre. The story below is the shortest one in it; indeed one of the shortest stories anywhere. It's also out of copyright so I can reproduce it here - hurrah! - and I think it's fantastic. It's from 1919, for anyone who thinks newfangled 'flash fiction' is actually new.
And it pretty much speaks for itself.
Climax For A Ghost Story - I.A. Ireland
"How eerie!" said the girl, advancing cautiously. "--And what a heavy door!" She touched it as she spoke and it suddenly swung to with a click. "Good Lord!" said the man. "I don't believe there's a handle inside. Why, you've locked us both in!" "Not both of us. Only one of us," said the girl, and before his eyes she passed straight through the door, and vanished.
I'm delighted to announce that one of my stories from The Other Room, Red Route, is also now available in the second anthology from BestsellerBound. The anthology collects together ten short stories from ten authors, across all styles and genres. Best of all, it's available for free from Smashwords and hopefully soon from Amazon (UK | US) when they match the price.
And if that cover doesn't scream scary, literate horror, I don't know what does.
The BestsellerBound website itself is a message-board for readers and writers alike, and one that's very 'pro-writer' (to use a dreadful phrase). Some of the writers I've mentioned here before, such as Neil Schiller and Maria Savva, are regulars there. Any writers out there might want to check it out...
Today's guest blog is from Mike Lewis, whose Amazon Author Profile begins with the great sentence "Mike Lewis is a writer from Woking in England; the place that the Martians first landed in H G Wells' The War of the Worlds".
By coincidence I finished reading this book for the first time at the weekend - I was expecting a period-piece, but found it fascinating how modern some of it seemed. The destruction, the panic, the way a civilization could just crumble in hours...It must be interesting for Mike, reading the bits where his home village is set ablaze!
But great though The War Of The Worlds is, it's not a short story, so let's move on.
As you might guess, Mike is a science fiction author, and his collection The Smell of Magic and Other Stories (UK | US) offers 8 short stories and 2 pieces of flash fiction and is on sale for just 99c on Amazon for the kindle until the end of August.
Take it away, Mike...
In the genre I write for, Fantasy and Science Fiction, the short story has never gone away. Despite journals such as the New York Time reporting that there are no longer any viable short story markets and that the short story as a commercial form is dead; the F &SF short story market continues to thrive with new markets added every month.
Science Fiction, as we know it now, started with short stories in magazines such as Astounding and Galaxy in the pulp era in the USA and some of those magazines are still being published today. I think that one of the reasons that the SF short story is alive and well is that Science Fiction is very much a literature of ideas; and what better format to express one idea, cleanly and simply than in a short story? There is none of the clutter of a novel with the need to develop characters, handle subplots and bring the reader through a maze of multiple strands and multiple ideas. With the short story, the single idea works and works well.
Take some of the stories from my own collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction (The Smell of Magic and Other stories):
First Through the Post takes the idea of physically sending yourself through a vacuum parcel system and explores it through a race over rivalry and love.
Waiting for An Angel takes the idea of a man dying but not leaving until an angel comes to collect him to explore the world view of a slightly simple man.
Coopers’ Creek explores the possibility of redemption through a road trip.
Ashes
takes a fairytale set in spaces and plays with the ideas and stereotypes.
And so on….
None of these ideas themselves are strong enough to sustain a whole novel by themselves but provide a perfect fit for a short story. A good short story takes a ten or fifteen minutes to read but can stay with you for much, much longer.
Yes, yes, I've mentioned Iain many times on this blog, and his story Lilies - which is included here. But the praise is justified. The best stories here (for me Sighted, Here Comes The New Way, and the aforementioned Lilies) are those which are the most original, where the author is doing something utterly his own. Some of the others have a more conventional ghost/horror story structure, but always with something new - even if that something is just the clarity and precision of Rowan's prose, which is sparse but strong, and full of memorable little phrases. In particular the depiction of a war-torn city in two of the stories is brilliant. 
As you might guess, Mike is a science fiction author, and his collection The Smell of Magic and Other Stories (UK | US) offers 8 short stories and 2 pieces of flash fiction and is on sale for just 99c on Amazon for the kindle until the end of August.
