short stories

World’s Strongest Librarian is Three Years old Today. New Short Story, My Novel for $2.99, and More

It’s hard for me to believe, but this goofy little blog is three years old. Nearly every day for the last three years I’ve written here. This site has changed my life, but that was never the goal. I write because it’s fun, because it helps me figure out who I am, because it pays [...]

April 9, 2012 READ MORE →

An Author I Wish Everyone Knew About – J.G. Ballard

I first heard J.G. Ballard’s name in connection with the film Crash and its NC-17 rating. Not the super-shrill-racism-is-bad (which of course it is) film Crash. I’m talking about the David Cronenberg film from 1996 which features a peculiar group of people who get turned on by automobile collisions. (Honk honk!) The movie sounded bizarre. [...]

December 19, 2011 READ MORE →

Three Great Books About Boxing

I’ve always been a fan of boxing. I watched fights with my dad during the Mike Tyson heyday. These days I can take it or leave it, as far as watching it goes, but I still love to read about it. I was reminded of this after picking up Katherine Dunn’s book One Ring Circus: [...]

January 23, 2011 READ MORE →

Book Review: Full Dark, No Stars

Being sick is always a great reason to catch up on your pleasure reading. As I have hacked my guts up this week, again, I took about five hours and read straight through Stephen King’s latest book, Full Dark, No Stars. Most of my favorite pieces of Stephen King’s writing are found in his short [...]

December 12, 2010 READ MORE →

Book Review: Welcome To The Monkey House

As much as I love Kurt Vonnegut’s entire body of work, there are few of them that I love the way I love Welcome To The Monkey House. It’s a book of short stories by a man who generally published longer works of fiction, but wow–it’s really good. Mark Twain said once that if he [...]

November 5, 2010 READ MORE →

Six Scary Stories About People In Weird Little Towns

It is a plot device that has been used by many authors in many different mediums. From multiple episodes of The Twilight Zone, to tons and tons of horror stories, to the movies and more, there is something attractive–to authors and readers–about people arriving (usually involuntarily) in a little town and feeling like something…just…isn’t…right. Here [...]

October 27, 2010 READ MORE →

Books of Blood by Clive Barker – Book Review

Of all the authors that my mom did not want me discovering when the bookmobile came to school, she singled out Stephen King. If she had known that I was also reading Clive Barker (creator of Hellraiser) on the side, she almost certainly would have marked him as public enemy number one. This was mainly [...]

October 24, 2010 READ MORE →

High Cotton by Joe R. Lansdale – Book Review

Now that Halloween is winding down, I’m ramping up my efforts to talk about scary stories and short horror tales as often as possible. I would also like to correct what I now feel is an unacceptable oversight–I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Joe R. Lansdale on this blog. He happens to be one of [...]

October 23, 2010 READ MORE →

Skeleton Crew Book Review

I absolutely love collections of short horror fiction, assuming they’re good, of course. Ever since reading Skeleton Crew by Stephen King, I have always looked forward to his books of short stories. SC is not my favorite anymore, but it still contains many of my favorite stories by Mr. King, including the novella The Mist. [...]

October 14, 2010 READ MORE →

10 Great Short Stories And Essays About All Kinds Of Things

1. The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper by Mark Twain Mark Twain is nearly always funny, but never more so, in my opinion, than when he’s talking about writing he doesn’t like. Cooper wrote Last Of The Mohicans and The Leatherstocking Tales. Whether you’ve read those (or love them) doesn’t matter–this is the best [...]

May 31, 2010 READ MORE →