My first published story

So, they day has finally arrived - a story of mine has been published for the first time.

It's called 'The Same Old Song of Plenty' and is in the second issue of The Bohemyth.

This is the first piece of fiction of mine that's been published anywhere so is a little landmark for me.

A good day all round.

Matt

Great writing: Jhumpa Lahiri

"...it started to rain. It came slapping across the roof like a boy in slippers too big for him"

Jhumpa Lahiri A Real Durwan (from 'Interpreter of Maladies')

My first review

A couple of days ago I emailed Scott Pack, author of the excellent Me and My Short Stories blog (which involves him reading and reviewing a short story every day). I asked if he'd take a punt on an unpublished stroy by a new writer and he said yes, but to expect an honest review. Fair enough.

So, today I had my first ever review (of my story Honesty Rules, the first short story I wrote)

The short story lottery

Having spent the last few weeks concentrating on writing and reading short stories I realised I don't actually own that many books of them. With that in mind I asked Twitter which book of short stories they'd recommend (either anthologies or collections by a single author). The plan was to stick them all in a hat (or whatever came to hand, me not being much of a hat wearer) and pull one out to buy, seeing as it's payday and all.

The suggestions for title or authors I received were as follows:

Richard Yates (2 votes)
'Fame' by Daniel Kehlman
Mary McCarthy
'Leading the Dance' by Sarah Salway
'A History of Sarcasm' by Frank Burton
'The Littlest Hitler' by Ryan Boudinot
'Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It' by Geoff Dyer
'Welcome To The Monkey House' by Kurt Vonnegut
'10,000 light years from home by James Tiptree Jr
'Ingathering' by Zenna Henderson
Raymond Carver (5 votes, including a specific one for 'What We Talk About...')
Third Class Superhero' by Charles Yu
Borges
Ballard
Cheever
' The Method ' by Tom Vowler
'Fragile Things' by Neil Gaiman
'When the Nine Rolls Over' by David Benioff
'The 27th Kingdom' by Alice Thomas Ellis
Roald Dahl


...and the winner is (rolls up sleeve, shoves hand into bag full of scrunched up paper)...

Richard Yates

Thanks everyone