Writer. Reader. Human. Managing editor of Forge LitMag. Winner of the Excellence in Prison Libraries Award.
Today sees the launch of a fantastic new literary and visionary journal. CEllA’S Round Trip has been created and edited by Rachel Hartley-Smith. Please check it out, I know that you’ll be blown away by the visuals and the writing.
I have subscribed to Time Out for years and years. Today my weekly copy arrived, and squee, I’m in it! Or rather, Porn Mallow, a story of mine, is in it. Or to be more exact, my story is in Litro, which is being given away free with Time Out.
I had this idea for a story well over a year ago. I wrote it but something didn’t quite work. I posted it for critique in The Fiction Workhouse. They said it had many flaws and suggested I concentrate on one part and cut another. I left it to simmer. I have kept on thinking about it, wondering how it could be strengthened. I sat down recently and tried again. I thought I’d had some great inspirational idea. I cut parts ruthlessly, wrote some new bits. I left in the stuff that had positive feedback, expanded it. Then I asked a couple of writers whose opinions I respect to take a look. One said there was too much that was unrealistic and I should chop those parts. I did. I sent it to another 2 writers. They both said, hmmm, not your best work, and it could really do with some more magic. One even went on to describe exactly what I had cut.
The collection opens with Isolettes and the arresting line
Blue tube, green tube, clear tube, fat tube.
However, perhaps the author is not sure enough either of his own voice, or of the reader’s ability to get it, so follows up with A Dr Seuss rhyme. Yes, thanks, got that. Never mind, he continues with an image of a premature baby that is so entirely unexpected and yet spot on, that I was astonished. That is just the opening page.
There is so much here, sometimes too much. The text of Isolettes is thick with puns:
Nick U Nick off
The pent-up suite
If marriage is an institution married people should be institutionalised.
Pushing through though is a tender understanding for character that gives heart to this and the majority of the other stories.
Green fluorescent protein is a bittersweet tale about a 17-year-old boy coming to terms with his sexuality. At home his alcoholic mother talks to the ashes of his dead father, at play Ruby-Doo, the skinny bookish science fan he befriends, confuses his feelings. There are more of Smith s accurate descriptions:
…Ruby-Doo does the fake crowd roar – the hushed wahhhh – I taught him.
These are people that we meet again in Funny weird or funny ha ha? and whilst I am a huge fan of the short story form it felt like there was such warmth and depth to this trio of unusual characters that I would welcome reading a novel about them. The B9ers are a support group for people who have had benign tumours. Bang Crunch is the story of the extraordinary Eepie Carpetrod, whose rare syndrome makes her live her life in fast forward, aging rapidly, racing towards death.
Occasionally it seemed to me that Smith thought of a witty phrase and then wrote a paragraph around it.Extremities is an idea that failed in my opinion as he writes of gloves that yearn for a particular hand, and a talking foot.
The last story, Jaybird is also the longest. It centres on a group of Montreal-based actors. Benoit Doré, a man whose “…laid-back look was a lie. His mussed-up hair came courtesy of a mud putty that had set him back twelve bucks”, mentors a woman who works at an agency looking after actors’ interests, and she uses the opportunity to take revenge on her clients. The story twists nastily along and I read, wincing. At the end though, there is much needed possibility and hope. Like so many collections, the quality is up and down according to the strength of individual stories, but this is a good introduction to Neil Smith, and I look forward to reading more of him.
(I wrote this piece for The Short Review)
I am delighted to see Vanessa Gebbie’s beautiful debut short story collection “Words from a glass bubble” is on the longlist for this most prestigious award.
Do you remember me telling you about the very cool editor? The one who was encouraging in his rejection, and who then accepted a different teeny flash of mine? Well his name is Coop Renner, and he is the editor of elimae. I am so proud to be in the latest edition.
Well after the lovely folk at The Pygmy Giant were so understanding about me submitting a story that I’d bought from Chris Killen, I thought I should send them something that I actually did write!
I am so happy that flashquake have published my tiny story ‘Let her sit in a flowerpot’ today.
So, to recap:
Chris Killen
offered a story for sale, in return he wanted a bag of hula hoops. I said I would buy the story, and he emailed it to me. I sent him 2 bags of hula hoops and he has posted a picture of them on his excellent blog
He suggested that as I am now the owner of the story I should submit it somewhere, which I did. I sent it to The Pygmy Giant
and they liked it. I explained to them that the story was not written by me, but that it is mine. (I was a little concerned that they may think that I was trying to pass somebody else’s work off as my own.)
Anyway, the story has been published today, so do hurry over and read ‘my’ story, written by Chris Killen.
The title is:
One day I will move to the seaside and it will be good, and I will sit down by the shore and rest my head on something and feel peaceful, and go to sleep listening to the sound of the sea, and maybe never wake up
My writing chum Tania Hershman has launched a new site today. It is called The Short Review, and is a place for, da da, reviews of short story collections. The reviews are written by short story writers, and it is going to be a wonderful place to find out about small press publications, classic collections, new big league collections, all short story collections in fact. It looks wonderful already, she has done a brilliant job.
Go look!
http://www.theshortreview.com/index.html
(Oh, and yes, one of the reviewers is me!)
Sara Crowley 