2018 Short Story Advent Calendar Unveiling: December 11 and 12

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1. 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?

   1. the white chocolate snowman was delish! It was filled with chocolate prailine which is one of my favs

2. 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!

   1. Jessica actually responded to me on twitter and said she did the gender switcheroo on purpose!

3. 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.

   1. ok footnotes need to be banned! I hope the publisher is listening for next year LOL

4. 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.

   1. Hmm yah that doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s so hard to find footnotes that are well done!

   2. Yeah, this is my only example. David Foster Wallace books can go float in a river. He’s the master of the annoying footnote.

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