The Norton 5
Well, this was brutal. It was fun, but brutal. I think we discussed... well, I don't want to get into the exact number of stories we discussed, but damn, it was a LOT. Narrowing it down to just five to send to Norton was not easy at all. But we did it. I just sent off the email with the five precious attachments. Wish the writers luck. Here are the stories we nominated for inclusion in the next Norton anthologies:
On the Inside of a Horse's Skull by Daphne Buter
Carnivale by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
Drop by Roy Kesey
Thirty-nine Years of Carrie Wallace by Jeff Landon
Metallic by Ellen Parker
And there are so very many more we'd have liked to have sent. This has been a great experience, not only in terms of the recognition, but even more because it forced us to go back and read a lot of stories and fall in love with them all over again.
It's out of our hands now. Best wishes to the writers! I hope to see all of you on a bookshelf soon.
posted by Dave Clapper @ 4:07 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
I can't imagine how agonizing that must have been. Best of luck to Daphne, Pia, Roy, Jeff, and Ellen! Kudos to SmokeLong for promoting excellence in all things flash.
Wonderful choices! I hope they all make it in!
All great choices, though it must have been tough. I think that "Metallic" is actually one of best flash fiction pieces I've ever read.
Thanks, Sharon, Katrina, and Matt. Yeah, it was brutally tough. But also fun. "Metallic" was actually the one we were iffiest about, just because it's so much edgier than anything we'd seen in previous volumes of the anthologies. In the end, though, we felt that if we tried to predict what they would or would not like based on their tastes, we'd never get anywhere. So we stuck with the five that we felt the strongest about.
(And I happen to agree about "Metallic." It's kind of a touchstone piece at SLQ. We refer back to it often.)
Great choices! I'm excited for Smokelong and glad to see that it is getting the notice it deserves.
Congrats to you all. I think it's great and keeping my fingers, legs and eyes crossed for acceptances.
Thanks so much, everyone. A huge thanks to the writers, but also to Kathy Fish, Randall Brown, Thomas White, and Steven Gullion, for all their work helping to assemble the list of nominees.
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