About The Site

I love a good story that you can read in a few minutes. Sure, novels are great, novellas are awesome and long short stories can be really gripping, but sometimes that’s not what I want. Not at all. I want a quickie. I think the quickie has as much a place in our hearts and minds as the all day marathon. It’s all about variety.

I know in the past if I am at a friend’s house and I’m waiting I’ll cruise the book racks. See what they’ve got. A bookcase can be a real indication of what someone is like. If it’s a longer wait then I’ll get something down and start thumbing through it. If there’s short stories then I look to the contents and find the shortest one. Then I read it. I’m on a time budget and I need to get things done. The one that comes to mind is Dean Koontz’s ‘Kittens‘, in his Strange Highways collection. It’s a story that’s about 7 pages, or something, and it’s always stuck with me. It’s so short, simple and bloody effective. I really dig that story.

Tonight I wrote a short story, just over a grand and a half of words. Pretty short really. But sometimes those ones are the best. Sure, it’s a glorified vignette, but what’s wrong with that? You can get character, you can get scene and you can get some action. What more do you need in a quickie?

More writers need to bring back the quickie. In fact, the short story is a dying art, unless you’re already a published superstar. There’s not really many places that I can find to publish one short story, and good luck getting a collection off the ground if you have nothing else under your belt. I have over a dozen completed shorts, but I have no idea what to do with them. Hopefully, one day I can get a collection together, but the odds of that…I’ll just keep dreaming.
————————————————————————————————–
I wrote most of my Ego proposal the other night, then rewrote most of it tonight. That worked a treat, the second passover was much, much better. Think it might not be that long till I am happy and can send off. Nice.
————————————————————————————————–
I read the first two trades of Brubaker and Rucka’s Gotham Central series today. They’re pretty good. Not what you usually get from a comic, and I kinda dig that. The opening Mr Freeze story really grabbed me, not to mention Lark’s art being fantastic.
————————————————————————————————–
I’m planning on running fourteen kilometres in five days for the city2surf event. I think I’ve trained enough. Guess we’ll have to wait and see…

Posted on August 5th, 2008 by ryan
Filed under: Writing, comics