It gives me little pleasure to make such a bold declaration, but - with the exception of fiction intended for print publications - I will not be writing or submitting short stories any more. I know server and admin and website costs are expensive, but when it reaches the point where it costs $11 on average to submit a single short story to an online-only publication that is all but guaranteed to fold within a year, one has to take a long, hard look at oneself and realise this is time, money and effort spent elsewhere. It’s a shame the way prices have crept up in the past seven years. Back when I started submitting in 2015, I could submit five or six short stories for a cool $20. Now? Hey you, wanna submit to our 250-word short fiction challenge!? It’s $14.95 for one entry or $25 for two. There’s a $50 cash prize if you win….which you almost certainly won’t! That’s madness. I thought maybe it was a temporary thing, because it started with the pandemic, but three years on it is only becoming more avaricious. So that’s over.
It isn’t going to leave much to report on each month. I’m waiting for the galleys of the new novel so I can start sending it out, but until then I’m in a holding pattern.
In other news, I’ve been asked to translate a biography by one of the world’s most famous living composers. Strange things happening in recent months, let me tell you.
Book of the month: The Old Man and the Sea. I read it once, long ago, as a precocious preteen, and I remembered nothing about it. After angrily chewing through Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and The Left Hand of Darkness, Hemingway was a palate cleanser. As I understood it, the boat is a boat, the fish is a fish and the man is a man. I don’t know if he actually believed that when he said the book contained no symbolism, but I definitely wouldn’t have put it past him to have written the most simple story he could think of and then sit back and watch as academics pulled it apart - like sharks attacking a giant fish, say - in search of a deeper meaning. I raise my dry martini to you, Ernie.
Album of the month: Blómi by Susanne Sundfør. I think this will be an album that people remember twenty years from now. I think, I said. I’m not sure. I need to listen to it more. But it has a weight and an intelligence to it that you don’t hear much these days. She sounds like she should have been a contemporary of Kate Bush.
Movie of the month: Oh, I’ve watched some trash this month. Yes, Madam! The Bedroom Window. Dream Lover. Thanks a lot, Criterion. I will offer up In A Lonely Place for two reasons. First, Bogart is a total brute in this film. Almost from the beginning, his Dixon Steele (“Dix! OH DIX!”….says literally everyone in the movie) leaves a pretty sour taste. Second, I was expecting all the way through that the narrative would find a lame way to make Steele come good. Instead, the ending is thankfully just as bitter as his character.
Jazz music:
2 Kedr Livanskiy - With Love K…
3 George Clanton - Justify Your Life
