Short Story is the New Black

In this decade, we will see the return of the Short Story. Sure, they have been around a long time, but they fell out of fashion and people thought them to be a format for academics and other people who talk a lot. There always have been people who put out short stories, such as Dahl, Heinlein, Proulx, and a bunch of others, but what we see now is different.

With the emergence of new devices for people to read with, short stories are back with a vengeance. Independent authors have channels for their single stories, so there’s no longer a need to compile the 20 stories and then hunt for an agent and a publisher. Applications such as Five Stop Stories feature single stories that you can read your iPhone and get new stories delivered to your device on the run. iPads and other tablets, not to mention Kindle, support short story reading. And there are more websites with free short stories than you can wave your laptop at.

So, isn’t it time you had a look? Of course, the emergence of indie short story authors has produced many good anthologies too, and compilations of single author stories. The point is that short stories are there for you to enjoy when you have only a few minutes to spare, and no chance of immersing yourself in a full length novel.

Heikki Hietala has written a novel of historical fiction called “Tulagi Hotel”, and released a 18 story compilation of his short stories as “Filtered Light and Other Stories” by PfoxChase Publishing in February 2012. His work is often speculative in nature. You can see more of him and his work at http://www.tulagihotel.com.