Paul Blaney's Blog - Posts Tagged "anthology"

Length is a strange thing. I've always been drawn to writing short stories but 'short' used to mean 8,000 or 10,000 words. Then it was 5,000. More recently, I've hardly written a story that's longer than 1,500 words. Many are under 1,000. Is my concentration span shrinking with age? Or along with the culture's? I like to think not. It may in part be work-related. I have less time, so I like to work on a story where I can get in and out. I also like to be able to polish every word. To feel that every word is just right, the rhythms too.

I just received a copy of Flash Fiction Funny, an anthology that has one of my stories in it. And I'm loving it. Reading the stories there, I sort of wonder why anyone would want to read, or write, longer ones. But that's silly, of course. Or maybe it's just me.

A project I've considered from time to time is writing three versions of the same story: one 5,000 words, one 500, and one 50. As a way of seeing what's lost and gained by brevity. I'll do it one day.

Available now from Guide Dog Books
The Irreal Reader collects the best fiction from The Cafe Irreal

Order direct or purchase from Amazon

The Cafe Irreal: International Imagination, a pioneering web-based literary magazine, first went online in 1998 with the intention of publishing a type of fantastic fiction most often associated with writers such as Franz Kafka, Kobo Abe and Jorge Luis Borges. To this end, it has published more than 250 authors from over 30 countries. In the course of the past fifteen years, it has also seen its editors nominated for a World Fantasy Award and been named by Writer’s Digest as one of the Top 30 Short Story Markets.

In this anthology, Edited by G.S. Evans and Alice Whittenburg, Guide Dog Books presents a selection of the fiction and essays from The Cafe Irreal that take us most definitively into the realm of the Irreal. These include pieces by Diploma de Honor Konex winner Ana María Shua (Argentina), Michal Ajvaz (winner of the Magnesia Litera prize in the Czech Republic), Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Simic, and Pushcart Prize winners Bruce Holland Rogers and Caitlin Horrocks.

The Irreal Reader: Fiction & Essays from The Cafe Irreal