three short stories: Unbound by Marsheila Rockwell, A Magic Broken by Vox Day, and Something Worse Hereafter by Sarah A. Hoyt

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had sort of a forced hiatus from writing for the last five days, and I didn’t really have time to read anything of length.

So, instead, I read short stories. Specifically, three of them:

UNMADE, by Marsheila Rockwell, which is another entry in Marcy’s series of Arabian Nights-themed fantasy stories. It’s a direct sequel to BOTH, a previous short story, and both (heh) stories are an interesting take on Frank Stockton’s famous THE LADY AND THE TIGER short story, but with more sorcery and shapechanging. I really hope Marcy turns the world and characters into a full-length novel at some point.

A MAGIC BROKEN, by Vox Day, is essentially a caper novella. A high-ranking elven noblewoman is held captive in a town of corrupt merchants, and both a powerful wizard and a renegade dwarven gladiator undertake to free her for their own purposes. Naturally, mayhem ensues. A MAGIC BROKEN is an entertaining stand-alone read, but an obvious setup for Vox Day’s longer fantasy series, (not that there’s anything wrong with that) which is coming out in a few months.

SOMETHING WORSE HEREAFTER, by Sarah A. Hoyt. In this story, two lost souls struggle to survive in Hell, which one does by killing demons and absorbing their life forces.  Neither soul can remember their previous mortal lives, save for a vague suspicion that they somehow knew each other. However, surviving for that long in hell draws the attention of powerful demons, and the lost souls soon find themselves in a lot of trouble. An entertaining cross between Dante and GHOSTBUSTERS.

The interesting part about all of this is how electronic publishing has made short stories viable again, both for writers and readers. A few years ago, the only places to sell short fiction were three or four professional level magazines, the occasional anthology, and a horde of small presses with names like Lizard’s Arse Publishing that paid $5 a story and invariably went out of business after seven or eight months. Now it’s more economically viable for writers to do novellas and short fiction.

And for readers, it’s great because if you want to read a short story, you can do so without buying the anthology or the magazine or whatever. (Like buying music tracks individually from iTunes without buying the whole album.) I read all three of these on my tablet this weekend, in short blocks of time while I waited to find out what I would have to do next. That certainly would not have been possible three years ago.

-JM