Early morning post

I don't normally blog in the morning. I don't normally do much in the morning, but this one started off so well I thought I'd jot it down. First, I wake up, open Facebook, and see a lovely status update from a new writer friend, Nicola Morgan, who "doesn't normally read short stories", saying, to my delight, that she is "blown away" by The White Road and Other Stories! A convert... how fabulous. Once you start dipping into short-story-land, you're hooked.

Boyd Tonkin certainly is, bless you Boyd. In today's Independent newspaper, in an article entitled "Short-haul fiction, long-term benefits", he says:

Here's a star-spangled shortlist of leading writers who have published, or soon will publish, works of fiction since the last Man Booker contest: Kazuo Ishiguro, AL Kennedy, Ali Smith, Will Self, Chimamanda Adichie, Alice Munro. None of them could have featured on this week's long-list. Of course, the final name gives the game away. Canada's doyenne of the story that packs an entire life, and world, into 20 pages might already have won the Man Booker International Prize for career achievement. But the annual competition still shuns volumes of short fiction. Which means as well that first-rank debut collections, such as (this year) Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, never stand a fighting chance. Should that rule now change?

Yes, Boyd, yes! And then, if it couldn't get any better, he says:

In the Manchester-based Comma Press and Salt Publishing in Cambridgeshire, Britain has two high-performing specialist imprints with a robust commitment to the briefer forms.

Oh, Boyd! Sending much love to the Indy today. I will leave you with his parting shot:

"The only rule is to write originally and well - whether the result takes two, five or twenty thousand words."

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. (New prize for 2-word stories, anyone??)
Read the full article here.