Category: fiction

Why short stories? Why not?

September 17, 2025 / chiselch

It would be presumptuous to think my little site could influence you — and you, too — in your reading habits. So let me presume.

I love short stories, perhaps the main reason I write them. Yet in the publishing world, all the glitz goes to the big projects — novels, and overloaded nonfiction tomes intended to help you live your life better, or understand how our forebears fumbled the ball in centuries past.

Anyway, short stories rock. Think of it like this. It’s like streaming TV. Most episodes of popular passive programming run a half hour. To check my assumptions, I asked Mr. AI, and here’s what he/she/it said: comedies often run for 22-30 minutes, while dramas are generally 45-60 minutes long.

So, you watch short stories. No novel condenses to 30 minutes. So you’re already there.

You can buy a book of short stories, read one, put a bookmark in, set it down, and when you have a spare half hour (or less, if your chosen writer likes the flash form, that is, stories of 1,000 words or fewer, about the length of a newspaper essay) you pick it up and snack on another tightly written tale. Like eating a hamburger, and we all love hamburgers, just not all hamburgers.

For fun, check out the BBC’s annual short story awards.

2nd place winner in Cambridge Short Story Prize 2025

September 15, 2025 / chiselch

I rarely enter writing contests, not because I don’t believe in my work, but more because I’ve been to Vegas. The odds.

So it was with a bit of what-the-heck that I tossed a story into the Cambridge Short Story Prize 2025 competition earlier this year, sponsored by TSS Publishing, the folks behind The Short Story web site. Imagine my shock to learn that I had placed second?

I want to get one of those big foam fingers that has a We’re #2 on it, so I can put it on my hand and pump it up and down at appropriate occasions. Not sure what those would be, but you get the idea. This and a bottle of Coke qualify me as much as anyone for the Nobel. Hey, maybe President Trump and I could share a room?

But on second thought …

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s a link to the story. It’s a bit dark, informed by the painful experience of someone I knew long ago.

Something Quirky and Gothic, Just for You

July 7, 2025 / chiselch

Happy over here to celebrate the appearance of my story “Wisdom & Co.” among a host of other fine fictions at The Short Story site. It’s a lean, clean temple to short fiction — and other narrative, reviews and interviews with diverse talents. You wouldn’t know from looking at it, but it’s a British citizen of the world stage. Rupert Dastur helms this mighty ship.

There’s always a seed for my stories. This one emerged from a dream — a recurrent dream — about me wandering around in a newspaper newsroom, at a loss for how I got there and what I’m supposed to do. It’s a nightmare, about the collapse of print journalism and the end of that part of my life. But it’s more than that. It’s about siblings holding on to the past, distince personalities most at home among similar types. I set it in a venue inspired by a trip to Savannah, Ga., in early 2024. Antebellum houses, adult children still tied to their mother’s apron strings.

Anyway, if you wish to read it, go here — or go home.

Technology justifies itself after the criminal fact

December 2, 2024 / chiselch

Ahh, the poor, hapless tigress, blinded by the pursuit of her prey. Confident, yes, that she has executed the perfect crime. Done in, as it happens, by the ubiquitous technology of our modern times. Don’t leave home without it. Check out the full tale in the latest issue of the Lowestoft Chronicle, here.

Tale inspired by a past that felt like quicksand: “Unfurnished,” in Does It Have Pockets?

November 2, 2024 / chiselch

Check out a fresh story of mine — it’s titled “Unfurnished” — just up today on hip new lit site, Does It Have Pockets?

As with all things fiction, this tale has its roots all tangled up in memories of the author’s own early days out in the world, making a hash of almost everything. There’s a first time? For everything? Seriously?

Oh, yeah. If we’re lucky enough to survive our life education’s early years, we might learn to do a few things right, occasionally. Tip the scales toward normalcy, whatever that is. Maybe it’s just a painless state. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Proud to find a place at the Bull stable of chiseled chompers

November 7, 2023 / chiselch

Couples come in different shapes, sizes, colors.

Big fat smile on my face, to have new work at the lovely Bull site. As Senior Senior Editor of Editing Stuff & Things The Drevlow notes, this hybrid pub is “dedicated to examining the evolution of modern masculinity.”

“Exit Velocity” emerged from an image — of a ratty old house trailer, sitting in desert dirt. This happens frequently with me. I love road trips and locking in on something strange, lost, bottomless out in the middle of nowhere. I’m always thinking, “What in the hell is life like inside that piece of shit … habitation?”

In this case, everything beyond the trailer, which is everywhere and nowhere in particular, was entirely made up. Although I had a few real people in mind when I fleshed out the cast and conjured an alligator for a starring role.