Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Light and Dark

Over my lifetime I read a few short stories here and there, but mostly stuck to novels.

I would be pleased to continue reading and writing novels, but to establish writing credentials, I think I have to publish short stories. I enjoy writing short stories, but I agree with Orson Scott Card--it takes about as much conceptual work and research to write a short story as to write a novel, and novels are so much more lucrative.

To learn more about short stories, I seek the best speculative fiction short stories and learn from them. Even among the best collections I find many stories that I consider marginal. Naturally, every story is not for every reader but, in my opinion, some bad writing sits in high places.

Chizine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words, publishes excellent dark speculative fiction short stories and poetry.

Kirt Dinan's Longtime Gone won Chizine's short story contest in 2007. I read it last week. It grabbed me and held me. It took me into another world. It was not strictly constructed on scenes, as I prefer, but it absorbed me--the best short story I have read in a long time.

Enjoy.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi there. Editor-in-Chief of ChiZine here. Just stumbled across this post while looking for something else related to the webzine. Thanks so much for the kudos. So glad you dig the 'zine!

Cheers,

Brett Alexander Savory