2018 Short Story Advent Calendar Unveiling: December 11 and 12

I don’t like to post more than one article a day because I know y’all got lots on, so here are the videos from yesterday and today’s advent calendar unveilings!
I haven’t actually read a book by Chuck Palahniuk since his 2010 release Tell-All, which is also the year I met him, and helped organized his event here in Calgary. His writing memoir Consider This, Moments in my Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different features many stories of his various book tours because they…
I’m tight on time these days (isn’t everyone at this time of year?) so I’m squeaking in these videos right at the tail end of my toddler’s nap. Or, in today’s case, her two hour lay around in bed, singing and reading books. Whatever, I’ll take whatever alone time I can get, especially because these…
I adore this book. I knew I would, there’s a cat on the cover and I heard Patrick deWitt read from it during his Giller event here in Calgary last year and the section he read was HILARIOUS. Luckily the rest of the book lived up to his stellar performance, and I think I’ve found…
Alexander McCall Smith is just one of those guys-he’s super nice in person (yes, I’ve spent one-on-one time with him, and he wore a kilt!), he writes wonderful books, and he’s super prolific, even though he’s a millionaire and no longer needs to work. What’s not to love? The premise of this book didn’t even…
I love reading short stories. I seem to flip through them faster than a novel, simply because it it forces you to reach the end of one story before you put your bookmark in. I also find (and I know I’ve said this before) that they’re typically better written than novels, because the writer has…
Has anyone ever heard of YOSS? Well it stands for Year of the Short Story, and it happened a couple years ago, but I’m still trying to keep the momentum alive by highlighting how important short fiction is. Listen in for my (somewhat) convincing arguments! CBC.ca | The Homestretch | Short fiction picks.
Comments are closed.
Now that’s a chocolate bar!! I’d have assumed it was a mum too, I think, proving it’s not only men who are sexist! 😉 How was the white chocolate snowman?
the white chocolate snowman was delish! It was filled with chocolate prailine which is one of my favs
December 11, Mister Elephant: I liked the no-name, anonymous approach of the story. The part where he hit the girl on the head with the pop can and left her on the ground was very strange. The seemingly random thoughts reminded me of when I first wake up in the morning and the brain starts whirring.
Cutest interview with the author at http://open-book.ca/index.php/News/Meet-our-September-2018-writer-in-residence-short-fiction-wizard-Jessica-Westhead
P.S. I had the exact same thoughts regarding gender at the beginning. Weird!
Jessica actually responded to me on twitter and said she did the gender switcheroo on purpose!
December 12, A Clean Break: OMG, again with the footnotes. I swear, if I ever edit anything with footnotes that isn’t an academic paper, I will be advising them otherwise. So annoying, and really breaks up the reading of the main story. Other than that, it was a pleasant story about a family…and bagels.
P.S. I, too, had trouble keeping track of the various family members throughout.
ok footnotes need to be banned! I hope the publisher is listening for next year LOL
I also hate footnotes in stories because so many of them will appear in the MIDDLE of a sentence! Then you HAVE to re-read the sentence from above or it makes no sense. Honestly, the footnotes I’ve seen done well in fiction are in Dietland by Sarai walker. The character is remembering her youth and there are footnotes that are quotes from another book that the character is reading at the time that she’s remembering. They’re inserted well and easy to follow, heightening the story instead of dragging it down.
Hmm yah that doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s so hard to find footnotes that are well done!
Yeah, this is my only example. David Foster Wallace books can go float in a river. He’s the master of the annoying footnote.