New Minor
My friend (and highly respected Giant commenter) Kyle Minor has a new story called “The Truth and All Its Ugly” live at Harper Perennial’s Fifty-Two Stories.
I forgive him for being a storyteller only because he’s one of our generation’s finest.
Hopefully he’ll take me up on my offer to hold a public conversation here at htmlgiant about our differing perspectives on the art of fiction. He’s a powerhouse of literary knowledge.
At any rate, here’s a taste of the new story:
I kept walking, him on my shoulder, axe in my free hand, until I reached the clearing. Then, careful not to wake him, I unbuttoned my jacket and got it out from under him and took it off and laid it on the ground. Then I laid him down on it and made sure he was still sleeping. Then I lifted up the axe and aimed it for the joint where his head met his neck and brought it down.
Blake Butler—
Stephen Schmunk is the winner of the Lamination Colony nice sentence raffle, receives a free copy of Scorch Atlas. Stephen, please email me your address for shipping. Forgive me the indulgence, too, for mentioning that you can read the shortest story in Scorch Atlas now at 52 Stories. Leave a comment on the story there from now until Friday and I’ll give another copy away to a random person. Thanks!
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Harper Perennial and Congrats to DearLeader
Fifty-Two Stories with Cal Morgan is a ‘New Delivery Service’ from Harper Perennial intent on publishing a short story a week for an entire year. Of the site, Cal Morgan writes:
This year we’re celebrating the thriving art of the story by sharing a new one every week: most of them new, a few of them classics, from authors you know and some you don’t, each of them treasurable in its language or wit or human insight.
This week, Morgan has posted ‘The Copy Family’ by our own Blake Butler.
About the story, Morgan writes:
Here’s the first story we’ve selected from the wide array of submissions from our readers. Blake Butler writes to say that “The Copy Family” is from a book he’s just completed, not yet published. It reminded me of some of Poe’s comic stories, or of Tom Neely’s graphic novel “The Blot.” Could I describe exactly what it’s about? I’m not sure I could do this odd family story justice. But it will stay with me for a long time.
Click on over to have a read, everyone, and good work, Blake Butler.