Recently Reeves asked:
"Please name and date the last short story not written by
Stephen King or
Ludlum or Ellroy that you read in ANY magazine."
I've read a lot but to name only one, that I've mentioned in
earlier posts,
"Drop Zone" by RARA-AVIS's own Mark Troy appears in the April
1998 issue of
*Mystery Buff Magazine*. *Playboy* still has at least one
short story, often
a mystery, in every issue. So does *Redbook*. So does the
Franciscan monthly
*St. Anthony Messenger*. So do all sorts of other magazines.
*Ellery Queen*,
*Alfred Hitchcock*, *Mary Higgins Clark*, *Murderous Intent*,
*Hardboiled*,
and *Whispering Willows* are just a few of the paying markets
that specialize,
not just in short fiction, but in short crime fiction. There
are dozens of
others specializing in other genres.
"Writers today, unlike yesterday, don't "learn their craft"
by writing short
stories first, then progressing to novels."
Again, it ain't necessarily so. It's very difficult to sell a
novel without
an agent. It's very difficult to get an agent without some
resume items.
Short stories are a way to get professional credit, and they
are almost always
submitted unagented.
"We no longer live in a culture that fostered writing, when
we had
Scribner's (Magazine) and Colliers and The new Yorker, and
all the
other greats that nurtured the careers of Fitzgerald,
Faulkner,
Capote, Chandler."
I can't really argue with that, but the conclusion that the
short
story is dead is certainly premature. Crippled certainly,
but alive
and definitely kicking. - Jim Doherty
--UNS_gsauns2_2944278529--
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