Short stories - an under-rated medium?

[Leslie]

Short stories do tend to be under-rated - it has to be the novel (all too often full of so much unnecessary padding - never mind the quality feel the weight) for the tale to (supposedly) be any good, for the author to be a real author. A shame, because most if not all the real stories in our lives, we hear from someone in just a few minutes - which suggests that even a short story might be a touch on the long side!
So "dear readers", says he, if you like novella length tales, ones you can read in a morning or afternoon (or even in an evening!) you might care to have a look at The Golden Tup or any of the other stories in The Red Grouse Tales series. Enjoy!

[J.]

" When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant." Truman Capote.

I agree. I've found more novels, more nonfiction that were satisfying to me than short stories. And genuine classics like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", Damon Knight's "To Serve Man", Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" or almost anything by de Maupassant are hard to find.

[Jim]

One only has to familiarize oneself with the very popular and highly successful short stories of famous authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, O'Henry and Damon Runyon that have stood the test of time and been read by millions to know that the short story has always been, is now, and probably always will be a popular niche among avid readers.

The stories written by the aforementioned authors have also been converted into popular and commercially successful Broadway plays and movies.