Status Updates From The Novellas

Midlisters 4/5

"Midlisters": 3/5 - This story was entertaining all the way through and it held more of the character-driven quality that Burke clearly attributes to his best writing (and he's not wrong). In this one, he writes a vaguely fictional account of a horror author in a struggling marriage who endures varieties of insecurity until life events render the insecurities moot. Rough typos and a self-indulgent ending

The one you think you're already writing about. The same one we all fear: Death. Mortality. Isolation. Fear of being alone. Fear of having to bury our loved ones, and the selfishness of wanting to go before them, despite the terror the mere thought of it instills in us.

The seemingly hard-to-miss typos do not bode well for this last story ("Midlisters"), despite the flattering introduction by Jack Ketchum. Burke is a great writer, I wish I had steered toward a different title