Bound to Be Read Books, the indie book store a mile from here, now has copies of Best American Mystery Stories 2012, which contains my story “Trafficking” and a whole slew of really good writers.
Folks are always telling me “I love short stories!”* but then the Industry (by which I mean publishing) keeps crying “short stories don’t sell!”
I guess the Industry knows of which it speaks, I mean, it’s got hundreds of M.B.A.s with spreadsheets telling it so.
Still.
Short stories are cool. Short stories are just long enough to read after you get the kids to sleep and slip into bed yourself without your eyelids getting heavy. Short stories are the connective tissue between poetry and the more work-a-day narrative world of novels. Short stories are windows that open on to other places.
Plus, if Bound to be Read Books sold a couple of copies of BAMS 2012, they might stock it next year, and that would be a drop-in-the-bucket toward proving the Industry wrong.
Short stories. Who doesn’t like the underdog, the dark horse, a chance to turn the tables?
*They may just say that to be polite.
Katherine L. Hester 