The problem with short stories...

I love short stories. I love both reading them and writing them. Up until recently - up until the advent of the eReader really - short fiction was in short supply (pardon the pun). Well yes, there have always been good stories in a few genre magazines like Ellery Queens and Alfred Hitchcock, (which I love, by the way) but by and large, mainstream short fiction has been difficult to find. 

This wasn’t always the case. Back when I was a teenager I remember devouring my mother’s McCalls, Redbook or Good Housekeeping. Those magazines were loaded with short fiction. During the summer it was a bonanza. The summer editions were thick with stories, five or six in each issue, a whole marathon of short fiction to curl up with on lazy warm afternoons.

And then for some reason they decided that no one wanted to read stories anymore (whoever ‘they’ are). And as quick as that short fiction went out of fashion. (I don’t know why. No one asked me!) We are coming on three or four decades with a dearth of magazine fiction. 

Until now. With the invention of the eReader those of us who love short fiction can buy and read short stories to our heart’s content often for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

And so, I present my newest short story, A Small Season of Magic. I'm calling it a novella because technically it's longer than a short story, but maybe not as long as a novella. It probably falls into some new category that no one has defined yet. (Novelette?) But that’s the beauty of this new world of publishing. The old size rules just don’t have to fit any more. Stories can be any length. The eReader doesn’t care. 

A Small Season of Magic represents a bit of a departure for me in terms of genre. It’s not a mystery, yet it contains mystery. It’s about school friends and bullying and brokenness and yet it’s not. It’s about life and death and love. It's about romance and compassion. It’s exceedingly sad, yet hopeful at the same time  And like its name suggests, it’s about magic.

Here are the links for download:
Kindle U.S.  Kindle Canada,  Kindle UK,  Kobo,  Smashwords

I hope you enjoy it.
The problem with short stories?  There just aren't enough of them.