SHORT CIRCUIT A Guide to the Art of the Short Story

Draft cover, Short Circuit.

Yikes, it is a year since I was walking round Cork with Jen Hamilton-Emery, Director of Salt Publishing and guru/midwife to their great short story collections, and I muttered something about Salt having a poetry ‘How-To’ book but not a short story one. ‘Gap in your provision,’ I muttered.
And it is just over a year since I had an email from Jen: ‘About that How-To book. Good idea. Do it…’
There are some extraordinary writers out there, people who have not only won the top competitions, but are generous too, and love the short story. They gave freely of their knowledge and their words, and are all utterly amazing. THANK YOU.

Here is the contents list:

Graham Mort: Finding Form in Short Fiction
Clare Wigfall interview: “I Hear Voices”: Voice, building character and much more
Alison MacLeod: Writing and Risk-Taking
Nuala Ni Chonchuir: Language and Style
Chika Unigwe: Settings. A Sense of Place.
Alex Keegan: ‘24’: The Importance of Theme.
Lane Ashfeldt: Building a World
Adam Marek: What my gland wants. Originality in short fiction.
Catherine Smith: Myth and Imagination.
Tobias Hill interview: Character, dialogue, and much more.
Sarah Salway: Stealing Stories.
Elizabeth Baines: True Story, Real Story – Good Fiction?
Marian Garvey: On Intuition. Writing into the Void.
Tania Hershman: Art Breathes from Containment. The power of the short short story.
David Gaffney: Get Shorty. The micro-fiction of Etgar Keret.
Elaine Chiew: Endings
Paul Magrs: Thoughts on Writing Fiction, at the End of Term
Vanessa Gebbie: i) Leaving the Door Ajar: On Opening the Short Story
Epilogue: Carys Davies, Zoe King, David Grubb, Linda Cracknell, Jay Merill, Matthew Licht.


I would appear to have nearly, but nearly done it. What think of the cover??