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Aug. 1, 2007 I've written about two dozen short stories over the past
fifteen months and accordingly, I've been studying the short story market.
The paying short story market is dead. Playboy and The New Yorker won't
even look at a short story authored by an unagented writer. I suspect
other contemporary magazines, such as Harper's and Zoetrope strongly favor
stories written by agented big name writers and give unknown writers the shaft,
shifting their submitted manuscripts to a slush pile perused by some twenty year
old intern who couldn't tell the difference between fine literature and tabloid
journalism. The horror, sci-fi, and mystery markets have shrunk to maybe
one or two or three decent paying magazines per genre, and they're flooded with
story submissions. Despite this, many of the stories they do choose are of
questionable quality.
I finally had a story published in a print magazine: Sinister
Tales; June 2007. (available at www.darknessproductions.com) The
stories in Sinister Tales 2.2 are of the same caliber as those published by
Cemetery Dance Magazine, the only good paying horror mag left. I think
they're even a little better but most needed some editing. Sinister Tales
has no editor while Cemetery Dance has about twenty. The latter lucked out
years ago and still survives because they had the privilege of publishing a
story by Stephen King and ever since, they've had a kind of hero worship column
devoted to him in every issue. So with his name plastered all over the
front of the magazine (whether he has a story inside or not) the magazine has a
circulation and therefore a budget.
My recent focus on short story writing has naturally led to a
search for good contemporary short story collections. This summer I've
discovered two: High Cotton by Joe Lansdale and High Lonesome by Joyce Carol
Oates. I read Joe Lansdale's "On the Far Side of a Cadillac Desert With
Dead Folks" in the Mammoth Book of Zombies a couple of years ago and was
impressed with his action packed stories and the down-to-earth Texas machismo of
his protagonist. High Cotton has more of the same plus a heavy dose
of black comedy, but the best story is "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's
Back," a tale that can be read on more than one level. In a
post-apocalyptic setting a nuclear scientist is haunted by his daughter's ghost
while the people around him are mutating into plant flowering monsters. On
the surface--a B movie sci-fi kind of story, but trust me: the theme is much
deeper.
Joyce Carol Oates seemingly brings her characters to life with
little effort, and the reader could swear that the characters she's developing
are real people, that she simply is writing non-fiction. Though most of
her stories are published by big name contemporary magazines and literary
journals, they are all good to excellent and easily enjoyed by the average
reader who might find some of the stories in those publications (especially the
literary journals) little more than pointless drivel. She's a writer's
writer. I doubt non-writers, though kept on the edge of their seats when
reading her stories, really can appreciate how she executes complex
story structures so flawlessly.
These two writers could be taught alongside Edgar Allen Poe in
high school English classes. Poe's prose is like word magic, his
vocabulary impressive compared with today's standards. Not all poets make
a successful transition to prose: James Dickey's Deliverance is a great
story, but the prose is workmanlike at best. However, in Poe's stories
every word, every sentence is perfection. And who can forget his
imagery--the black cat, the beating heart, the slowly lowering
pendulum.
My story, "The Final Game," now available at Pens On Fire,
was inspired by an Edgar Allen Poe story. In fact it's simply a modernized
version of one. Email me, if you can guess which one I ripped
off.
------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. http://www.authorsden.com/marksgelbart Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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