Monday, June 21, 2021

"Birthday Barbeque" Reprinted in "Best of 2020" Collection

I'm pleased to have my short story "Birthday Barbeque" reprinted in Potato Soup Journal's "Best of 2020" collection. The Amazon blurb says "These fiction and nonfiction stories from around the world range from the transformative to the inexplicable. The end of a love story hangs in a tree, a family barbecue enters the twilight zone, and a woman seeks the ultimate backdrop for Zoom meetings, with unexpected consequences." I'm rather flattered that "Birthday Barbeque" is one of the three stories highlighted in the blurb.

The story idea came to me at a family barbeque over 15 years ago but it took me a while to get it to work on paper. With Twighlight-style stories, one has to walk a fine line between over-explaining and being too obscure. Pleased that the editors must have thought I got that right.

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3gGHpaT

Ebook: https://amzn.to/3j1zYfU

Chicago Manual of Style Applied to Fiction

The Chicago Manual of Style is industry standard for North American publishing, but it was designed for academic texts, not fiction. So, that's always been problematic when coming up with questions about style while editing (writing) fiction. I was this many days old when another editor pointed out that Chicago Manual has a BLOG for fiction to answer those questions:

https://cmosshoptalk.com/fiction-plus/

Well duh! Great resource!