I talk to Jim Bates about his collection 'Where the heart is'

 

Why did you decide to collect these particular stories together? What is the overriding theme here for you

I hope this doesn’t sound too weird, but I chose these stories with my dear departed mother in mind. Mom passed away in 2011. We were very close. She knew how much I loved to write, yet had been putting off jumping in and making even the tiniest of beginnings due to many reasons (family, career, the usual suspects). In one of the last conversations we had, she counseled me to ‘Start following your dream, Jim. Before it’s too late.’ You know what? She was right. I took her advice. The night after that conversation, I took the leap and committed to start writing every day with the idea in mind of trying to be the best writer I could be. I’m glad I did! This was back in 2011, and it was the best thing I've ever done. I love writing, and this collection of stories, “Where the Heart Is,” is a book I’m sure Mom would have liked. The stories are character-driven and have a positive message, both themes that my mom enjoyed in the books she read. Mom, these are for you!

I love the cover.  Why was this particular picture important?

 

I’m so glad you like the cover. I do, too! The inspiration came from one of the photos on the calendar that hangs in the small room that is my writing space. I have an appreciation for lakes, and I love to sit and look out over them and enjoy their beauty. Being on a lakeshore is also a nice time to contemplate life. The cover represents both of those quiet pastimes. Thank you to Martin James for helping me select the cover image and also for the final great design. It’s perfect!

You worked with our intern, Fatima, on this collection.  Can you tell us a little about that process? 

Heartfelt kudos go out to Fatima! She was wonderful to work with. I appreciated that she was conscientious, thorough, and she also gave me some great input. I’d love to use her again if that were ever possible!

Jim, you’re a prolific writer of short stories. How do you manage to keep finding inspiration?

That’s a very kind comment, Gill. Thank you very much. I’ll answer by reiterating that I love to write, and that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Seven years after dedicating myself to writing in 2011, I started sending my work out for publication. You published my first story, “Remembrance Day,” in 2018, and it gave me a huge boost in confidence. Thank you so much for that! I am a very quiet person. I do not mind being by myself at all. I love to go for walks and read. Throughout my day, I’m always thinking about possibilities for stories or poems. When the idea comes to me, I’ll write it down. Today, for example, I was playing with my yo-yo. (Yes, you heard me right, my yo-yo. It’s part of my morning routine LOL!) The idea of a poem came to me as I was doing an “Around the World” move. I went upstairs and jotted the poem down in my notebook. I went over that first draft and liked it. I then wrote the poem. I still liked it. It will be added to my new poetry collection, “Quantum Moments.” Ideas like that happen to me all the time, and I’m glad that they do! It helps to keep writing interesting, challenging, and fun.

 Do you have any advice for those who are new to writing short stories? 

Yes. Try to write every day. If you have a story you are working on, keep at it. Once you finish, review it, make sure it’s the way you want it, and then write another one. Stay with it! Ray Bradbury said, “If you write a story a week for a year, you’ll have 52 stories at the end of that year. I’ll guarantee at least one of them will be good.” To that I’ll add, probably more than one. The point is, keep writing. You only get better by writing. I’ll also add this: write for yourself. Write stories that you would want to read. If you like what you’ve written, that’s the main thing. You can never please everyone, so you have to please yourself. At the end of the day, you can say, “You know what? I don’t care what others say, I think my story is pretty good.” When you get to that point, when you like your own work, it’s a great place to be.

Are you working on any new projects?

Yes. Right now, I’m doing the final edits for “The Rebels,” which is Book 5 of my Creekside Chronicles YA (and older) dystopian/adventure series. It’s almost ready to be published. I’m also in the process of publishing “Periodic Haiku,” a collection of 5-7-5 syllable haiku poems based on the first 118 elements of the periodic table. And I’m also working on a collection of poems to be published in 2026 entitled “Quantum Memories.”

Do you have any events planned?

No events planned at this time except for ‘soft releases’ on FB and my blog.

Note: Thank you so much, Gill, for the opportunity to be on your blog. Your continual support of my writing efforts is stupendous and means the world to me! Again, thank you so much. 

See Jim's web site here:  https://theviewfromlonglake.com  

Find your copy of the book here  

 

Henry Mitchell talks to me about his writing and his recently published collection of short stories

 

Telling the Dark – an intriguing title. How did you come to name your work that way?

Thirteen years ago, when I first dared submit some short fiction to a publisher, an editor remarked, “These are some dark and hopeful stories. There’s a lot wrong with them but I think they are worth trying to save.” That was not precisely what I hoped to hear but the stories were accepted, and I titled my first short story collection, Dark on the Mountain. Five years later, I was still writing dark and hopeful stories, hence the title of my second collection of tales, Early Dark. I am still mining that vein, I suppose. There needs to be some dark in a scene to show us where the light is shining.

Why do you consider the short story form important?

I began writing short stories because I had first written a novel that after two hundred queries was still in search of a publisher. It didn’t take long to realize that it is more difficult to write a good short story than it is to write a novel. A short story is a high wire act. Missteps have serious repercussions. There’s no room for surplus verbiage. There is a reason birds travel light. A real advantage to writing short stories rather than novels is that it takes much less time to fail at one. They also take much less time to read, a real advantage in a cultural climate that favors short attention spans.

What other sort of material do you write?

Between short stories, I’ve written six novels over the past thirteen years. They all began as elaborations of a short tale, usually because a character in one of them caught my fancy and convinced me they had more to say. I also run a newsletter on Substack, Drovers Gap, that requires a short daily post, generally a reflection on the absurdities of life in Trumplandia, or an excerpt from whatever fiction project I may be working on.

Do you have a writing routine?

I don’t get religious about it, but over the years a pattern has developed. I try to get out of bed before daylight and write for a couple of hours while I’m the only human awake in the house. I tend to write on paper and edit on a screen. In the mornings I’ll work in my garden if the weather’s fit or take a walk with my wife, Jane Ella, across the mountains surrounding our little town. Afternoons, I’ll answer mail and read as unavoidable errands allow, and maybe write for an hour or two in the evenings, or talk to my wife about her day. We don’t have a television.

Or a writing space?

I love my writing space. It is a former porch we enclosed against the weather with windows along the long north side overlooking the garden. I find the steady silvery daylight calming and focusing. Jane Ella’s office space is on the opposite south side of the room. We work back-to-back and are effectively alone unless we don’t need to be.

 

Do you have any advice for the wannabe short story writer?

Steady beats inspired. Write something every day. If you write enough bad stuff, something among it will be pretty good, maybe better than you knew how. And pay attention to your editor. They will be that person you hate to love, but when you behold your published story, you will. Your editor will see the story as a reader does, will prick you in that spot where your skin is thinnest, will open your eyes where you didn’t have any, will prune your tale to the quick. An editor’s loyalties are all with the story. If they must dent your ego to make your tale shine, they won’t hesitate. But at the end, you must know for yourself where you have writ right and where you missed your mark.

Are you working on any other projects at the moment?

I’m working on a novel, tentatively titled Gather the Fallen that I fantasize might become the second book in a trilogy that began with my 2023 novel Among the Fallen. Also sorting through thirty years of poems to see if there is something there that could be gleaned into a book. And there are the little stories, of course. I think I may have written the last one, and turn a corner to meet one more. Short stories remain my first love as a writer.

Do you have any events planned?

Later in September there will be a reading/signing launch party in the parish hall of the local Episcopal Church where my wife, a.k.a The Main Muse, sings in the choir. We’re working out dates for a couple of events at area independent book stores. I’m not clergy, but I’ve been invited to preach to some Episcopalians over the next few weeks. The first text I’ve been assigned is that lovely passage in Luke 14 where Jesus says we must hate everybody kin to us. When one is old and strange, folk will try to persuade you to do all manner of weird things you never expected to do.  

Find your copy of the book here  

 

 

 

Amita Basu talks to me about her recently published collection 'At Play and Other Stories'

 

Summer, 1999. Twelve-year-old Pragya spends her summer holiday with relatives in Calcutta, a muggy city stranded in the last century. Pragya can’t wait to grow up. But she struggles to choose a vocation. Bored by her gossipy relatives, Pragya befriends Maya the maidservant. Maya, fresh from the countryside, is devoted to her family, but harbours dreams of her own. Pragya and Maya rebel against gender and class constraints and bond over their ambitions. Soon, the two girls are ready to run away together and try life on their own terms.

“At Play” is the title story of this collection.

 

What made you select these particular stories for this collection?

AB: This is my first collection. I simply chose the best among the stories I had available. I’ve been writing short fiction for a few years.

I aimed for variety in theme, setting, and character. The collection’s unifying theme is broad: the experiences of women and girls (and the occasional nonhuman female) in contemporary India. The stories have women grappling with family and friendship, miscarriages and runaway children, love and sex, work and ambition, physical and mental illness, coming of age and aging, and the struggle to make a living.

 

How did you decide on the order for these stories?

AB: Just as, for the collection as a whole, I aimed for variety, so, in terms of sequencing these pieces, I aimed for contrast. I alternated longer pieces with shorter ones, darker with lighter.

 

What enticed you to write short stories in the first place?

AB: Getting stuck as a novelist! I spent my teens and twenties working on one epic, unfinished novel after another. I longed to have finished works to put out into the world. So I began writing short fiction in 2019. I’ve published in about 90 magazines so far.

I hadn’t ready very much short fiction before then; now, a good short story collection rivals a novel for my attention as a reader. My favourite of the short fiction writers I’ve discovered are Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, Deborah Eisenberg, and Lydia Davis.

 

What is more important to you, characters, setting, or plot?

AB: This has changed over time. In my teens, I used to love reading and writing description. Now, I prefer to focus on the story, setting the scene just enough so that the reader can picture what’s going on. In some stories, the setting gets more of the limelight. This is true in “Holiday,” where the characters take a trip to Nepal. This is their first trip abroad. And the mountainous setting causes nausea, which affects the characters’ judgment. So there I give the setting more space.

That said, I love stories that transport me. So I’m aiming now, in most stories, to replace tracts of description with a few precise, vivid details to create immersion.

In literary fiction, character drives plot, and plot reveals character. I have little innate gift for plot; it’s taken me a long while to stumble into an understanding of this precept in mechanical terms. George Saunders identifies causality as perhaps the most important element in a good story. He also discusses pattern variation and escalation in his excellent book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which my friend Anna Mandelbaum recommended to me. Creating a causal chain of events – with, say, two characters locked in an escalating rivalry – is the simple but powerful backbone of a good story. I think it’s rare, though: I can count on one hand the films, for instance, that build a long and solid causal chain. (The Dark Knight does this; so does HBO’s Rome series.)

Most successful short stories tell two stories in one. This layering is something I first structurally identified in Alice Munro’s novelette “Vandals.” This story is structured in two rings, which are both chained and concentric. The outer ring of the story, introduced first, is: a young woman takes her boyfriend to an old friend’s house and trashes it. So you wonder what’s gone wrong with this young woman. Then the story introduces the inner ring: you realise the answer lies in the young woman’s childhood experiences with her old friend and the latter’s boyfriend.

I first used this structure for my speculative/climate fiction short story, “Peace.” In the story’s outer ring, you wonder whether the protagonist will survive the storm. In the inner ring, you realise he doesn’t want to survive. So then you wonder if he will regain his will to live and his connection to humanity. The conflicts in both rings are resolved in the end.

Structure is something I’ve always struggled with. Again, I recommend Saunders’s book on writing and reading for anyone who shares my struggles. I’m also studying Carver’s work. When I read a story of his, I’m always satisfied, but I often struggle to articulate what exactly the story was, the connection between the characters or the events. He eschews conventional plot structures. To me this means his story logic is strong but subtle: the story’s flesh has hidden its bones well.

 

Are you a planner or a panster? Can you tell us a little about that process?

AB: This, too, has varied over time. As a failed novelist, I’d produce extensive drafts and then try to structure them.

When I began writing short fiction, I was a planner. I wrote increasingly extensive outlines as well as summaries of plot, story, and theme. The extensive outlines led to overlong stories: stories where the causal chain was roundabout or muddied. Also, of course, an overly extensive outline forestalls the joy of discovering as you draft.

Currently, I wait to start drafting a story until I have a fair idea of what a story is about, and where it will begin and end. Ideally, I’d take the shortest causal route from start to finish – but a route that was also surprising and novel. So, I suppose, I’m currently a semi-planner, semi-pantser.

 

What else do you write?

AB: I recently resumed writing poetry after a 20-year-gap. In secondary school I read the Romantic and Elizabethan poets and emulated their styles. Currently, I don’t read poetry, so I don’t know whether and how I’ll keep writing it. I’ve been writing straightforward narrative poems that address similar topics as my short stories. I’ve always wanted to write humour, so I’m trying that in my poetry.

I’ve got several novellas and novels in various stages of drafting or revision. I’ll go back and finish drafting my climate fiction novel in 2026. Climate fiction is a genre I’ve explored with some short stuff. I have several pieces of short climate fiction and speculative fiction in draft or revision. At some point I’ll put aim for a collection of speculative fiction. I prefer to read and write stories where, whatever the genre or setting, the focus remains on how people feel, think, and relate. So my speculative pieces are few and far between.

 

Are you working on any more writing projects at the moment?

AB: Yes, my second collection of short stories. Same genre – contemporary realist literary fiction. And a trio or quartet of novellas set during my PhD days. And another trio of novellas about sex, marriage, and treachery in contemporary India.

For now I’m focussing on the collection. I’ll finish it this year. Then the climate fiction novel. Then I’ll finish drafting one set of novellas, then another… And the moment I set down a plan like this, a list of priorities – something lawless in me decides, ‘To hell with the plan. I’ll write what I like, when I like.’

But finishing and publishing this first book has given me a boost of self-confidence. Most importantly, now I know that, however hard it is to buckle down and finish one project at a time, I can do it.

 

Do you have any events planned for the book?

AB: No.

Initially, I’d planned to get myself to do some marketing for my book. I did a few posts on social media. A friend drew up a full social media calendar. I got up one morning, glanced at this proposed scheduled of activities, and wanted to go right back to bed.

Marketing is not fun for me. Marketing would be nonoptional if I were a full-time writer. I’m not. I have a full-time job in climate action. So, for now – having told everyone I know about the book – I’ve decided not to do any more marketing, but to focus on writing. (I interrupted myself while writing this to send everyone I know a follow-up request to read and review the book.)

In my view, writing better stuff, and publishing it in better magazines, is the best means of marketing at my disposal.

Find your copy of the book here.  

 

Ben C. Davies and 'And So I Took Their Eye'

  Today I talk to Ben about  his newly published collection of short stories.  

 

 

We might describe And So I Took Their Eye as a collection of short stories. And yet it is more than that. Could you comment on the connection between the stories?
Absolutely. While each story can stand on its own, the collection is designed to echo and overlap in both subtle and more obvious ways. Characters reappear or are referenced indirectly, showing up in different forms and contexts. The first and last stories are told by the same narrator, but more than ten years pass between them, and a lot happens in the interim, involving a wide cast of characters spread across the globe.
 

It’s a web rather than a line, and my hope is that the connections build as you read, creating a deeper and more layered experience.

Can you tell us a little about what inspired you to put this collection together?
The inspiration came from real places and experiences, some of them mine and others that I witnessed. I didn’t set out to write a collection; it came together gradually as I realised the stories were speaking to each other. That’s when I began weaving them more deliberately.
 

Many of the stories are retellings of personal events, pushed in different directions. I often imagined how characters might react in situations I’d been in, and explored what would happen if those reactions were taken to extremes, for better or worse.

What would you say are the merits of the short story?
Short stories require precision. With limited space, every sentence has to earn its place.
 

They also allow for experimentation with structure, theme, and tone in a way novels sometimes don’t. You can take creative risks, which I really did with this collection. It was fun to explore and challenge myself. Sometimes those risks work, sometimes they don’t, but the short form gives you the freedom to try.

Are you a fan of the short story yourself, and do you have any favourite writers?
Absolutely. I usually read novels, but I love short fiction too. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories and Jared Lemus’s Guatemalan Rhapsody are collections threaded together by place, culture and identity, which I really enjoyed. I also really like Shehan Karunatilaka, and Lucia Berlin.

What was the editing process like for you?
By the time the manuscript was complete, I felt many of the stories were in the best shape they could be, especially since nearly all of them had already been published. Then Bridge House took the book on, and I had the chance to work with Allison Symes. I was lucky. She brought a fresh perspective to every story and helped take them further than I could have on my own, not just on the sentence level, but in terms of the stories’ direction and depth. It changed a lot, and the book is so much stronger for it. I’m incredibly grateful for her insight and care.

Do you have any tips for anyone wanting to write short stories and get them published?
Start small and submit often. Literary magazines and journals are great places to share your work, and the submission process helps build discipline, persistence, and confidence.
 

It probably goes without saying, but read widely in the form. And if you can, find a writing community. Feedback and encouragement are invaluable.

And what about putting a collection together?
As I mentioned, I love when stories are connected, even if only loosely. While working on this collection, I thought a lot about how the stories fit together—through plot, theme, and tone.

Once I had about five solid stories in place, I started writing with an overarching narrative in mind. It became less like sequencing an album and more like creating a concept album, a la Sgt. Pepper’s, especially with the bookended stories. Each story adds something different, but the whole should still feel cohesive.

Are you working on any other projects at the moment?
Yes, two. I’m currently pitching a novel set in Guatemala that explores tourism, corruption, and foreign intervention in a rural village. It’s a story close to my heart, based on time I spent living there. I’ve also just started a new project that looks at the American Dream and its unravelling. It’s still early days, but I’m excited to see where it goes.

Do you have any book events planned?
I do. I’ll be speaking at the San Francisco Writers Grotto on July 18, the day after the book comes out. I also have an event planned in London on August 19. I’ll share more details soon on my website and Instagram. If you’re interested, please do come join.

 

 Some endorsements of the collection: 

 Find you copy here