100 Short Stories: Stories 1-5
Jan. 8th, 2019 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grayestofghostsI’ve begun my 100 short stories challenge and I am going to lay down some ground rules.
I’m going to try to write something on most of them, but the fact is that sometimes there’s not a lot to say because short stories are, well, short, and I’m guaranteed to read some stories that I don’t like and sometimes it’s better to not say anything at all. Without further ado, the first five stories:
It’s a lot of Ligotti because I bought the volume Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe, which is two volumes of his short stories put together, and these were the last three stories of Songs of a Dead Dreamer.
So, at this point, I’ve probably read enough to talk about him a little.
Ligotti is famous for two things — “Lovecraftian” horror and being very depressed. No, not really that his stories are depressing, but that he himself is very depressed, and for my own safety I’m not going to pick up his non-fiction book, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race because there are enough people out there that prefer me alive to otherwise.
Anyway the comparison to Lovecraft is not unwarranted and in a way he does read like a guilt-free Lovecraft. I read through the stories and was able to get in many ways the same tone and feel of a Lovecraft story without the shocking amounts of racism. Not that one would say Songs of a Dead Dreamer is completely devoid of various -isms (indeed there’s an argument that the very genre of ‘Lovecraftian’ is inherently ableist), but you at least won’t have to go through the harrowing experience of cozying up to a sympathetic narrator with a dead son only to learn rather late in the game that he named his cat a horrific slur. I know that “The Rats in the Walls” is supposed to be horror but that wasn’t the kind of horror that I enjoy reading.
Anyway. Some of these stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer are pretty weak in that they don’t really go anywhere. They seem like they’d be rejected from all these magazines that I’ve submitted to that have insisted that “stories must have a plot.” There are gems in here, though. Probably the best is “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”, which is pretty funny, to boot.
- The stories must be short stories. Novels don’t count. I’m still on the fence about novellas.
- They must be stories I haven’t read before.
- I’ll post the titles, authors, and date finished with links to where the story can be read.
- I’ll post a big list at the end so you can see them all!
I’m going to try to write something on most of them, but the fact is that sometimes there’s not a lot to say because short stories are, well, short, and I’m guaranteed to read some stories that I don’t like and sometimes it’s better to not say anything at all. Without further ado, the first five stories:
- “The Music of the Moon,” Thomas Ligotti 1/1/19
- “Cherubim,” Julia Heslin 1/2/19
- “Out of the Darkness,” Courtney Cantrell 1/4/19
- “The Journal of J. P. Drapeau,” Thomas Ligotti 1/6/19
- “Vastarien,” Thomas Ligotti 1/8/19
It’s a lot of Ligotti because I bought the volume Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe, which is two volumes of his short stories put together, and these were the last three stories of Songs of a Dead Dreamer.
So, at this point, I’ve probably read enough to talk about him a little.
Ligotti is famous for two things — “Lovecraftian” horror and being very depressed. No, not really that his stories are depressing, but that he himself is very depressed, and for my own safety I’m not going to pick up his non-fiction book, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race because there are enough people out there that prefer me alive to otherwise.
Anyway the comparison to Lovecraft is not unwarranted and in a way he does read like a guilt-free Lovecraft. I read through the stories and was able to get in many ways the same tone and feel of a Lovecraft story without the shocking amounts of racism. Not that one would say Songs of a Dead Dreamer is completely devoid of various -isms (indeed there’s an argument that the very genre of ‘Lovecraftian’ is inherently ableist), but you at least won’t have to go through the harrowing experience of cozying up to a sympathetic narrator with a dead son only to learn rather late in the game that he named his cat a horrific slur. I know that “The Rats in the Walls” is supposed to be horror but that wasn’t the kind of horror that I enjoy reading.
Anyway. Some of these stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer are pretty weak in that they don’t really go anywhere. They seem like they’d be rejected from all these magazines that I’ve submitted to that have insisted that “stories must have a plot.” There are gems in here, though. Probably the best is “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”, which is pretty funny, to boot.
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Date: 2019-01-12 03:50 am (UTC)Have you read any of Jordan L. Hawk's Whyborne & Griffin books? They're m/m romance-fantasy-mysteries with Lovecraftian-ish horror elements, and they're a lot of fun!
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Date: 2019-01-14 03:15 am (UTC)