Category: short stories

short stories, Twentieth-Century Women Writers

Oh, dear: On Lydia Davis’ Collected Stories

Lydia Davis book cover Collected Stories

If you’re masochistically inclined, and enjoy soulless stories, lacking heat, heart and blood, then ohhh boy, is this collection for you. Thought not. It’s as if a writer of product manuals, structural engineering reports or business continuity plans decided to turn to fiction, and this book is the result. Yay.

Innumerable times Davis uses the continuous present tense – first person, second and third – but, rather than draw you into the story and character’s viewpoint, you soon end up thinking – again and again – that these stories are purely exercises in technique, in the mechanics of storytelling. A clever mind writing them with a Montblanc fountain pen, to amuse herself while occasionally genteelly sipping a china cup of Earl Grey tea, and a madeleine with tiny finger pointed up. Clever in the same way some people whizz through and complete a daily newspaper crossword and then think no more of it.

Sadly, I can’t think of a single story in this collected edition that made me marvel at the writing either for its virtuosity or for its characters. Depressingly, however, I can think of far too many that irritate for their lack of life and feelings, and absence of any real care or consideration for the albeit rice paper-thin characters.

Probably the most disappointing, irritating, pretentious, insipid, tedious, painful and banal short story collection I’ve ever read by an author so adored by the critics.

short stories, Trump Tastes like Chicken

Trump Chicken: A Grotesque Tale

Trump Chicken - A Grotesque Tale by bobbygw - book cover
A grotesque – or monstrous? – 99 cents or equivalent from Amazon

Dear Reader

When Donald Trump flounced onto the American political stage, with his usual gaseous blatherings and foul mouth, I wondered to myself whether we had entered the beginning of the end of times.

Let’s hope not. After all, we have enough problems to deal with, thanks to life’s bountiful and glorious pageant.

In the meantime if, like me, you have experienced one or more emotions of shock, depression, dumbfoundment, apoplexy and hysterical laughter about the ascendancy of The Donald and his shenanigans―then I think my new tall tale may be the restorative respite you have been searching for.

If you relish satire and a dash of gonzo storytelling, then I hope you’ll find this story is just your cup of tea―as we (sadly) don’t often say nowadays in merry ol England (which never existed, worst luck).

Feeling adventurous? Oh, go on, my lovely! Here’s a free taster of Trump Chicken: A Grotesque Tale.

As always, please know that I’d be deliriously happy and foaming at the apertures―eugh, I know―to send you a free Kindle edition or PDF of the complete story for you to read, if you wouldn’t mind possibly, ever-so-slightly-considering writing a review of it.

But fair warning, good folk: those with delicate stomachs, nervous dispositions, a tendency to the right wing of society, the rich―well, this monstrous imagining ain’t for you, and I apologise for any offence I may have caused by my presumptuous outrageousness in criticising The Man with that Hair.

Cheers and thank you for reading. Holler me with comments or feedback. I’ll always respond.

Muchos muchos

bobbygw

short stories

Be Gentle, Dear Reader: My First Public Short Story – Darker, Still

Darker, Still - cover Darker, Still is my first short story to go public. I’m hoping that, if you read it, you’ll be gentle in your criticism, dear reader (I know, I know: now, I’m asking for it – ahem). It’s a horror tale, with a dash of something else. Below is a blurb about it, followed by a brief excerpt for smacking your taste buds on.

If your madly generous heart and mind take an interest to read the entire story, I’ll happily send you a complimentary pdf copy for review. (You can read it for free on Kindle, but only if you have an Amazon Prime account.) Just leave a message in the Comments below, or zap me an email: bobby @ bobbygw .com and put the name of the story in the subject space, and I’ll get it right to you.

Heck, let’s go one step further (oh, yeh). If you possibly end up enjoying it enough to write a few words, or even a couple of sentences about it, on Amazon or Goodreads, then that’ll make me an eternally grateful happy bunny, and you an absolute bloody marvellous star. And if you read it and it’s not for you and your taste buds have gone to Accident & Emergency because they’ve experienced blunt-force trauma as a result, then know that you will be placed first in the queue to kick my bad-writing ass. But of course what really matters is your honest review.

How about this as a real thank you? In exchange for reading and reviewing it, I’ll even send you an original, handdrawn cartoon by yours truly. It is bound to be utterly juvenile and possibly Gonzo, and will be limited to the first 20 reviewers (yeh, right, you’re saying, as if I’m going to get that many), whether you like the story or not, godammit. (Of course, I’ll need your address, but I guarantee you 100% that it will never be used for any other communication from me or anyone else I know or don’t know, ever again, unless you masochistically insist.)

In the meantime, my apologies in advance if even the very idea of reading my story makes your eyes bleed and turns your lovely hairdo into a Donald Trump. On with the show.

Blurb

Darker, Still is the first horror story published by bobbygw. A tale of the unexpected, it plays with the ideas of the macabre. It speaks to our fear of darkness and the blackness of night, because when we are alone, in the dark, we all know it is then that things manifest from the void. If you find you’re too busy to find time to read a full-length horror story, but want to feel the fear in the time it takes to relax over a long, big cup of coffee, Darker, Still is just for you. Come on in, take the load off your feet and experience the darkness.

Excerpt: Opening lines

It is dark, but there is something darker in the room; darker, still, than the darkness which surrounds me in the night. It is here with me. It is waiting. I look across to it, but only and ever fleetingly. I am too afraid to look directly, to confront my fear with a gaze. I am too scared to stare. I am too fearful to look away for long.

My vision darts, flits through a line of sight, an arc that always, inevitably, comes to draw across the mass that is there. It is in one corner, a vague shape. It appears to be hulking over, hunched. Sometimes I think I see it move. Always, I think, it sits, crouches, it rests, knowingly. It is here for me or, rather, against. Sometimes, I hear what sounds like a rumbling; something deep-throated and rough. It is brief, as if an instant passing of a heavy-load truck, some distance away. But I feel the weight of it, still. Sometimes, it sounds like heavy air, pushing hard and thick through a tangle of wood and bush.

The sound of something low and limbed, pushing forward.