On a whim, I ordered Howard Who? from Small Beer Press (along with Kate Wilhelm's excellent Storyteller ). I'd read a couple of Howard Waldrop's stories before on the now-defunct SciFiction (the archives still work, worth a read), and was keen to read more. The man's a fucking genius. In the last week I've read about a man searching for the last dodos; Elvis wishing he could play the clarinet like Eisenhower instead of being a Senator; fishing for Leviathan after the Great Fire of London; zen sumos throwing their opponents with the power of their minds; and what happened to Mickey, Donald, and Goofy at the end of the world. All meticulously researched, and completely believable. Every single story is great. They're all examples of a writer getting an idea and running with it, elbowing aside worries about whether the story will find a market or any of the other crap that gets in the way. "Horror, We Got" is the perfect example. In it Israel builds a ...
Disturbing.
ReplyDeleteAre you entering that short story competition? I've read some of your early blog posts and they were excellent, surprisingly. I never had you down as a frustrated author. Frustrated alcoholic, frustrated millionaire, etc. certainly..
I think there's only about a week or so until the closing date. In that week or so I have to find the time to procrastinate over filling in my tax return (the whole country has to fill in a tax return over here, all at the same time - a ridiculous system), so I won't have any free time to procrastinate over writing a short story.
ReplyDeleteI have a long list of things to not get around to doing. It's very tiring maintaining it.
Oh, and also: aw, shucks, I ain't not nearly too good at writing the purdy words.
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