While some writers assemble short story collections around a theme, or connected with a framing device, most just pull together their latest and greatest…and then often find that a theme has emerged all on its own. Which is basically what happened to writer Kameron Hurley when she assembled Future Artifacts (paperback, audiobook), her second short story collection after 2019’s Meet Me In The Future. Well…except for the “latest” part.
With the cover declaring it, “A short story collection of nightmares, dreams, desires & visions of the Chicana experience,” you might think you have all the information you need about V. Castro’s new short story collection, Mestiza Blood (hardcover, paperback, Kindle). But as you’ll learn from the following email interview with Castro, there’s more to this collection than you might expect.
It’s October, and that means it’s time to read some scary stories (though, really, when is it not?). But while writer Eric LaRocca says the ones in his short story collection The Strange Thing We Become And Other Dark Tales (paperback, Kindle) are “mainly horror stories,” he also says in the following email interview that they’re driven by sorrow and grief.
The New Yorker is known as much for its literary content as it is for its cartoons. And with them running only four mini reviews every issue, you know a book must be special to be included. Though what caught my attention about their review of Eley Williams’ Attrib. And Other Stories (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) — so much so that I wanted to do the following email interview with her about it — was the opening of that review: “Mischief runs through this collection…”
If a writer cites Monty Python And The Holy Grail as having influenced one of their stories, you’d probably expect that story to be something in the historical or fantastical realms. But in the following email interview about his sci-fi short story collection Written In Light (paperback, Kindle), writer Jeff Young explains that the Python’s iconic Arthurian comedy was an inspiration to one of these genre tales as well.
While some short story writers find a genre or subgenre they like and stick to it, sci-fi and speculative fiction author Alaya Dawn Johnson has, by her own admission, “…played a lot with genre over the years.” Though that’s not all she had to say in the following email interview about Reconstruction (paperback, Kindle), her first short story collection.
Despite what the title suggests, the tales in Keith Rosson’s new short story collection Folk Songs For Trauma Surgeons (paperback, Kindle) are not musical musings for doctors who perform emergency surgeries. Though as he explains in the following email interview about it — in which he discusses how this collection came together — he does point out why it’s a much more fitting name than Country Songs For Cardiothoracic Surgeons.