Story 101

The ebook/print magazine Lamplight, Vol. 3, no. 1, which we could say specializes in a more "quiet" horror, contains my 101st sold short story, "Burning Stones."

"Burning Stones" isn't my 101st published story, as I have several stories contracted and paid for that have yet to be published, and it's not my 101st story because I have several stories currently aging like fine cheese in slush piles here and there, and it isn't my 101st acceptance because several of my stories have been multiply reprinted, but "101st sold" is accurate.

(The 100th sold was "On the Occasion of My Requirement", but that was the new story for The Nickronomicon, so the sale was more of a formality than anything else.)

So, when Oliver was due I began to wonder if I'd write at all differently. The answer is yes, I am. There have been alterations of theme, more families have been showing up, a dollop more autobiography integrated into the work, etc. A lot of these are also the as-yet-unsold slush pile stories as opposed to solicitations, so maybe I am doing everything wrong now.

"Burning Stones" I wrote for Oliver. That is, on the chance that he sees all these books and magazines in the corner and wants to read something of mine at age eight or nine or ten, this is the one I'd give him first. It'll also be useful, I think, if I happen to get hit by a bus and die before he learns to read. What I want to tell him is dumbly obvious to adults, but could be useful for a kid.

It was also an attempt at a Bradburyesque story, which is not my usual speed.


My usual speed.

There are many writers whose work I enjoy or have enjoyed, that I've never tried to emulate, and that despite my ability to do credible pastiches of any number of famous writers. I had no plan to do so with "Burning Stones." This turned out to be what I'd call a Bradburyesque story only after I was doing writing it. Really, it reads more like Bradbury trying to write a story in my mode, and with my concerns, than vice-versa.

There's an allusion to sex and a couple of bad words in the story, but is Oliver's childhood is anything like mine he will have heard it all before by the time he's eight or nine.

Anyway, "Burning Stones." Quiet horror. Light*(dark fantasy). Check it our. Read it to your kid.