Almost every authors/writer site talks about holiday gifts right now, so I hop on the bandwagon and plug: 99 Tiny Terrors!
As the title hints, this is an anthology comprised of 99 flash fiction short stories of a dark or horror bent. I have a strange relationship with short stories. I enjoy writing them, but am not the biggest fan of reading them, for the (probably) usual reasons: 5k word story is long enough to create some buy-in to character and setting, but the moment you get immersed, it’s over.
Flash fiction cleverly gets around that issue (for me) by being short and teasing. It’s over in a flash, and if it leaves me wanting for more, my author imagination can spin off into space without too many fetters. Even with ninety-nine of them, you can spend a few minutes while having a cup of coffee, waiting for an appointment or whatever. Or you can take an hour and read twenty of them in one sitting — they are certainly worth it.
99 Tiny Terrors has fantastic and SF stories by a variety of authors. The two best known are probably Hugo and Nebula Award Winners Seanan McGuire and Cat Rambo. I am about half way through, and so far there hasn’t been a boring story in the bunch. So apologies to all the other authors I am not naming, you are all fantastic!
The main reason I picked up the book is that is was edited by Jennifer Brozek, who is also editing its follow-up, 99 Fleeting Fantasies, where my story “Herbert” will be published, hopefully next year. The quality of 99TT makes me even more excited to be part of 99FF.
The book is only available on Kindle. If I’ve made you curious, here is the link in the US. (Not sponsored, so don’t feel a need to follow from here.)
Happy holidays!
Christian
P.S. The past few weeks have let me admire even more the writers who manage to juggle a day job, family, fiction writing AND keeping up their social media presence and blogs. I’ll try to do better next year, promise.