I love the nasty punch to the gut that a short, economically worded horror story delivers.
Think of the sleepless nights folks like Fred Brown, Richard Matheson and Joe Lansdale inspire with stories that clock in at two or three pages. Brown, especially, was a master of delivering mucho shock with a handful of expertly chosen words.
I see stories like that as the modern version of the campfire tale: enjoyable, quick-paced yarns capped with a grisly punchline.
That’s why I love the site MicroHorror.com. It’s become one of the Web’s best repositories for short horror fiction, and in this case the fiction is all really short. They don’t print anything over 666 words.
I was thrilled to see that Tom Blunt, horror columnist for AMC is going to reprint one of his favorite stories from the MicroHorror archives weekly to boost exposure for the site and its contributors. The choices will appear on his personal blog, Hermitosis.com.
The first is Oonah V. Joslin’s “Best Laid Plans.” Enjoy.