I’ve read and listened to Stephen King’s On Writing several
times now. I like to listen to it more
than read it, it feels like Steve and I are just kicking back and having a
discussion. You know, where he talks and I respond in my head. Sometimes I give him advice. Really.
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| Days of horror stories gone by.... |
Anyway, I’ve been reading him since fifth grade, good and bad, and I like that I can listen to him talk to me about his life and his work; kindly Uncle Stevey who will no doubt share his story because sharing his stories is what he does.
And some of those stories make me groan. Some are just too long and silly: Under The
Dome. Some I’ve heard before in a
thousand better ways: Dreamcatcher. And
some that are just plain BAD: Rose Madder.
For every Salems Lot and The Shining, you have a howler like
Geralds Game or The Tommyknockers. Not
that those novels are necessarily bad, just…King gone out of control? Is that the best way to put it?
So his novels are hit and miss for me, but the short stories
continue to surprise. Just After
Sunset and Full Dark No Stars are some of the best reads King has produced
in a long while. And who else at his level is putting
out anthologies? It ain’t Grisham, and
sure as fire ain’t Patterson.
I genuinely like King's short stories and find them the highlight of his output, which is funny since he was the guy who went on for...what? Twelve million
pages about a dark tower on a flower?
Seriously, I hung with those books through Wolves of The Calla and grew so tired of them that my memories of the first few books changed. I was in 8th grade when I started
them. 8th grade. Maybe they just make me feel old. Regardless….
So to keep the short story love flowing….
Recently, I finished three great anthologies of short
stories. I mean SHORT stories. Some so short I could transcribe five or six
of them right now and it would only take a minute or two.
One thing I brought away from it is how much FUN the reading
can be. You can’t stop doing it. It’s
the DORITO EFFECT, you don’t know you’ve had enough until you finish them or
you puke orange.
The anthologies are 100 Jolts by Mike Arnzen, Tiny
Terrors by Robert Eccles and Rest Area by Clay Mcleod Chapman. All are terrific collections of extremely short stories.
Arnzen is a professor in the wilds of western PA and the man
is an absolute dynamo of creative activity, setting off authorial Geiger
counters from all ends of the genre while skating around the edges
of what you would expect from horror.
100 Jolts has been around since 2004, and I’ve been wanting
it since I first saw it advertized in Arnzen’s newsletter/blog Gorelets. Gorelets, at the time, was a simple email dishing out
Arnzens musings on whatever he wanted, and was among the first interactive websites for horror-related material. Though I haven't visited in a while, it's still in operation and hasn't lost a step over the years.
“Notwithstanding the commercially
successful novels of writers like Dickens and King, horror is predominantly a
genre of the short story. Notably, both those popular writers mastered short forms
first. But before them, Poe – credited
with both the invention of the short story as a genre and being a founding
father of today’s horrific tale – predicated his work on the notion of the
‘single desired effect.’”
That “single desired effect” is all over Arnzen’s 100 Jolts,
so much so that his stories live and die by the effect – if you don’t like the
effect you don’t like the story, but don’t worry, it’ll be over in a second and
you’ll be on the next one.
Be warned though, Arnzen doesn’t mess around with the
descriptions of blood and gore, no one is immune here: babies, cows (yes cows),
children, adults are all put through the Arnzen grinder.
Robert Eccles' Tiny Terrors is a great companion piece and the two
make for an overwhelming evening of short horror fiction. While Arnzen is more poetic and experimental,
Eccles is the Ambrose Bierce of tiny stories – sharp, humorous stories
filled with some of the briefest, most disturbing vignettes ever. The effect is jarring: one moment he makes you
laugh and in an instant the knife is in your back. It's so unexpected you
don’t notice until the story is over and the blank space beneath is either
laughing with you or at you.
There are werewolves and vampires, serial killers, ghosts and zombies
– all the horror staples with just enough of a twist to make it all fresh and
enjoyable and ultimately, not knowing what to expect –even from all your
favorite horror friends, makes the book work so well.
Eccles is also a great reader, with a deep, clear voice to
translate fiction. Before reading Tiny
Terrors I heard him voice several stories at Liquid Imagination and Pseudopod. Like listening to Stephen King, it makes
you feel like Bob is right there with you, telling the stories to you and only
you; giving the work a sense of intimacy.
In a similar vein, Clay Mcleod Chapman’s Rest Area is another fine
collection of very short stories. Chapman writes very, very short monologues
that he performed in a theater or on radio. The stories go right to the edge of
horror without veering out of control.
And if you ever get the chance to
hear him perform one of these stories, your appreciation level will grow
enormously. I heard him read some
passages from his novel Miss Corpus years ago at a Barnes & Noble in
Richmond, VA and he is an astounding performer.
Ultimately, these collections of little stories achieve
the “single desired effect” by making me feel like the authors are telling me
stories around a campfire.
Yes, it’s a
cliché, but it exists for a reason. A
campfire, scary stories, a dark, starless sky, a clear dulcet voice and an
imagination give me the pleasant shiver any good story, regardless of genre,
should produce.
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