Short Stories

Short Stories — No Comments
30
Sep 09

Staccato: Microfiction

This looks interesting:

Staccato is all about microfiction.

Launched in Athens, Georgia, in 2005 as a semiannual print magazine, the editors soon realized that their small print-runs weren’t enough and they could deliver microfiction to more readers more efficiently (not to mention cheaper) if they focused their efforts online. Relaunched in 2009 out of Brooklyn, Staccato is now a forum where you can read and comment on stories from your favorite writers and writers you’ve probably never heard of.
http://staccatofiction.com

Fiction / Short Stories / Stuff on Other Blogs — No Comments
29
Jun 08

Great Story: I Am A Zombie Filled With Love

You’ve probably seen a few zombie movie, but have you ever wondered about the zombies’ point of view? This strange and sad short story by Isaac Marion gives a compelling look into how a zombie might feel. It’s a beautiful, well-written story. I like it a lot. It makes me feel funny:

I am a zombie, and it’s not so bad. I’m learning to live with it. I’m sorry I can’t properly introduce myself, but I don’t have a name anymore. Hardly any of us do. We forget them, like anniversaries and PIN numbers. I think mine might have started with a “T”, but I’m not sure. It’s funny, because back when I was alive, I was always forgetting other people’s names. I am finding that irony abounds in the zombie life, an ever-present punch line. But it’s hard to smile when your lips have rotted off.
Read rest of story

This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting MSPmedia: Indie Publishing & Production!

Short Stories / Writers/Writing Blogs — No Comments
10
Dec 07

Marching Morons

The Marching Morons is one of my favorite sci-fi stories of all time:

“The Marching Morons” is a science fiction short story written by Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy in April, 1951. It was included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two after being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965.

The story is set hundreds of years in the future: the date is 7-B-936. John Barlow, a man from the past put into suspended animation by a freak accident, is revived in this future. The world seems mad to Barlow until Tinny-Peete explains the Problem of Population: due to a combination of intelligent people prudently not having children and excessive breeding by less intelligent people, the world is full of morons, with the exception of an elite few who work slavishly to keep order. Barlow, who was a shrewd conman in his day, has a solution to sell to the elite.
Read More

This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Seed & Flame!

Short Stories — No Comments
1
Dec 07

Story About Mutated Vegetation on Shipwrecked Island

Do you know this story? guy goes on island that ship filled with chemicals crashed into. chemicals leach into island. over time cause island vegetation to mutate.

Mutated vegetation’s life cycle no longer reproduction-based. hence life of the individual becomes life of species. plants grow HUGE. This was a really cool story, I’d like to read it again. I don’t know who wrote it or what issue of Omni it was in, do you?

This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Seed & Flame!

Short Stories / Writers/Writing Blogs — No Comments
4
Nov 07

Kurt Vonnegut on Writing Fiction

Eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

– Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.

This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Seed & Flame!

Quotes / Short Stories — No Comments
25
Sep 07

Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”

This is one of many good quotes I got off this site, which I found via StumbleUpon. Thanks StumbleUpon! I love these quotes and as a student of physics I adore Einstein. I was just thinking of adding a quote of his in this story I’m working on, how cool is that.

This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Seed & Flame!