Short Stories on Wednesdays #18

Short Stories on Wednesdays is a weekly event hosted here, at Breadcrumb Reads. The purpose of this event is to encourage people to read at least one short story a week. There are no limits, of course! If you have made a post on the short stories you’ve read this week, please do leave a link in the comments section. If you haven’t made a post, it does not matter. I’d still love to know what you’ve been reading. Just put the titles down in the comments section.

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This week I read a couple of stories by a fellow blogger – The Scribbler. He writes for his own pleasure, but the two short stories I read were really really good.

“Nostalgia”
This one deals with the current trend of re-working classics (be they books or movies) to death. There is a dearth in originality on the screen and in the book market. A young writer, Rob, is caught up in this unhealthy trend. He is unhappy with himself each time he has to adapt an existing piece. But no matter how much he pitches his original stuff at his bosses, they never get accepted. Rob reaches a stage where he just wants to give up. But his healthy friendship with a legendary writer puts him back on the right track.

I loved this piece. It deals with issues that bother me a bit. I think fan-fiction in all of its varied forms has become a really big thing, these days. It started as something fun and non-profitable about a decade ago. But now it has become a full blown best-selling commodity! However, I don’t believe things are as bad as the story makes it out to be. Then again we’re reading this from a writer’s point of view, and things probably look nasty from that side.

“The Sound of Torment”
This one was completely different from the previous one. It’s about a man in prison, going crazy with only a dreaded spider as a companion. I couldn’t help but thing of Dumas’ Edmund Dante as I began reading this. The story was dark, especially as we descend into the mind of the prisoner and understand his strange relationship with spiders. There is a rather mystical quality to this story because of this relationship, and while the description at the end grossed me out a bit, I did think it was very well knitted together. I think Allen does a great job of taking us into the mind of a man slowly growing mad. I especially loved the skill with which he switched time frames – switching between the past, present and the future. These transitions were so smooth that you almost didn’t notice them, but never really got lost.

If you would like to read Joel Allen’s stories just hop on over to his blog The Scribbler and read ‘em.

And for those of you who aren’t aware of this, I have a post up that mentions some tweaking I’m doing with this weekly meme in 2012. Your ideas/suggestions are welcome, and if you would like to get a little more involved, there are a couple of forms you can fill.

So, then, what short stories have you folk been reading this past week?…