From a Farther Room

The ten finalists for the storySouth Million Writers Award have been announced! I'm very grateful to see that I now have four stories on the nomination list: Pieces from Small Spiral Notebook, I might not miss you from the Summerset Review, Self Defense from Pindeldyboz, and Ichthyology from JMWW. Have you submitted your nominations yet for the storySouth Million Writers competition? Anyone who reads, writes, or publishes short stories online can nominate one story published in 2005 for the "O. Henry Prize of the Web". And that means everyone, right? Million Writers: Recap Though I’ve been lucky this year to have eight stories published on line, and two in print, “Pieces” is the one that I feel came together the best. Take a look at it and see what you think. And if that one doesn’t quite do it for you, browse the rest of Small Spiral Notebook, without a doubt one of the best literary sites around. This was actually the source of my first bad review (and second review ever); but while it doesn’t rise to the level of Cheever and Updike, it’s really not a bad story. In fact, I still kind of like it. Certainly, no one can fault storySouth for limiting the pool of eligible stories to 1,000 words or more. As a challege to the collections like "Best American Short Stories" and "The O. Henry Prize", which implicitly limit themselves not only to print publications (and, apparently, "The New Yorker") but to longer stories, the Million Writers Award certainly looks more credible the more like the "old guard" it appears. Still, there's a wealth of wonderful little stories being overlooked; and because shorter is harder to write, these inelgibles may be the best of the lot. The story came to me before the “dirty” aspects, but the “dirty” aspects were so integral to the story that it really didn’t belong in a general literary journal. But Clean Sheets is different from the “dirty story” sites that are all over the internet; it’s a thoughtfully-edited, well-written journal that happens to be about sex. This is a somewhat experimental story, about points of view and parallel universes and disconnections. I hope you like it. It’s a strange little story–it owes much to the Kafka and Link and Borges I’ve been reading lately–about gills and ponds and cleaning fish. Million-Writers-Award-Worthy: Respectful Beatings for Very Good Help Million-Writers-Award-Worthy: Her Babies Million-Writers-Award-Worthy: Thief Million-Writers-Award-Worthy: A Happy Dream Million-Writers-Award-Worthy: The Tyranny of the Middle-Aged Short Story Writers The storySouth 2006 Million Writers Award, for short stories published on-line in 2005, will begin taking nominations on February 15. Watch this space for updates; I’ll be listing stories that I’ve read that I think should get a nod in the voting, and also a few stories of mine that meet the requirements.