Background
Latest News

Literally Stories – Week 57 – The Facts

typewriter

Did you know that Henry J. Heinz introduced the marketing slogan ’57 varieties’ in 1896 and later claimed that he was inspired by an advertisement he saw while riding an elevated train in New York City for a shoe store boasting ’21 styles of shoe’.

Well there’s a coincidence, one that leads me to a very obvious conclusion: the Illuminati are up to their old tricks again pulling strings and doing other underhand things you can’t actually see, or get anyone to believe in, as they always insist on pouring cold water on the obvious connections you made whilst reading clearly connected articles on Wikipedia.

The facts are the facts plain and simple.

Week 57 on Literally Stories saw the 285th story published on the site. Fact. In the year 285 Diocetian defended the Danube from Sarmatian raids and what do you know, the Danube flows through Germany and that’s where (Bavaria) it all kicked off for those dastardly secret society types who love eating bratwurst with, you’ve guessed it — baked beans. Also fact.

Continue reading “Literally Stories – Week 57 – The Facts”

Background
Latest News

Literally Stories – Week 56 – A Tale of Two Emails

typewriter

*The names in this blog have been altered to protect the innocent — not the guilty.

Email One — 23 December 2015.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…

In actual fact Twas the night before the night before Christmas, when an email landed in the Literally Stories inbox. Attached to the email a short story for our perusal.

Standard acknowledgement email is dispatched by yours truly.

All well and good.

Christmas came and Christmas went. New Year beckoned. New Year came and was soon spent and the story we received 23rd December continued to languish in our gmail account.

Forgotten. Unloved. Unread.

9 January 2016  — Email Two.

A standard rejection email is sent out to a much-loved LS published author, *Gertrude Ponsonby.

11 January 2016 — Email One

Email One is unearthed by the same buffoon who forgot to bring it to the attention of fellow Editors. Sincerest apologies email is duly dispatched to potential LS author patiently awaiting a reply:

Sorry *Engelbert — we somehow failed to flag up your story for reading… we will read it and get back to you very shortly.

12 January 2016 — Email One

Email is sent to the author of unloved, abandoned, forgotten story to tell them it is no longer unloved and will soon have a home at Literally Stories.

14 January 2016 — Email Two

A standard rejection email is sent out to the much-loved LS published author, *Gertrude Ponsonby; the same author who received the same email for the same story five days previously.

Oops!

Later that day

Much loved LS published author replies with typically pithy good humour:

Wow. You must really have a special hate for this thing. I’m used to rejection, but I don’t think I’ve ever had anything given the old heave-ho twice in one week. To be honest, I concur. The story sucks.
Regards
*Gertrude Ponsonby
~~~~~~~~

Continue reading “Literally Stories – Week 56 – A Tale of Two Emails”

Background
Latest News

Literally Stories – Week 55 – Allergens not in BOLD: strong language, dodgy humour.

typewriter

Hurrah!

Santa was back on form this year. He clearly read the message I left him, very carefully unlike last year when some incompetent stand-in or faux Mr. Claus totally f***** up.

Dear Santa I wrote — as you do — I would be most grateful if you could kindly arrange it that your elves assist you in the delivery of a number of…

Now conjure up a long list of ‘literary books’ by the likes of Orwell, Dostoevsky and other suitably heavyweight names including Albert Camus.

NB: To avoid severe embarrassment as once suffered by yours truly, please note that Mr. Camus was born in Algeria (then French Algeria) and his name is pronounced, not unsurprisingly for the French, Al-Bear Ca-Moo.

Not Al-But Ca-Mus.

Any road, as we say round these parts, you can imagine the puzzlement, nay sinking feeling that besieged me, when unwrapping many book-shaped packages I came across The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and did not subsequently discover The Outsider by said Algerian.

YA fiction is not, as you would no doubt hazard a guess, top of my must-read genre list, but to be fair to S.E.Hinton I read The Outsiders (published 1967), which was written by her when she was still in junior high school, and it is indeed a fine book of its type.

Continue reading “Literally Stories – Week 55 – Allergens not in BOLD: strong language, dodgy humour.”

Background
Latest News

Literally Stories – Week 52

typewriter

Well here it is, week 52. That must be a good twelve months but not if you multiply the four weeks that we have in a month with the twelve months that, was it, the Roman’s gave us? Oh and don’t start me about five week months. For anyone who is paid monthly then every four weeks ends up with thirteen pays a year. That will always sound good until you realise that there is no difference to your annual salary.

I suppose that week 52 should maybe be called week 54 as our anniversary on the 17th was mentioned two weeks ago on week 50 as the said anniversary was coming up the following week, which is of course a week behind as week one is at the end of the first week which is therefore read into week 2.

Now if anyone is left reading we come to a wee review of our stories this week. Before I go on I will swallow some Prozac. I can’t say for definite but I think dm gillis has given us our only Christmas story. Now don’t take that as an invitation to send any sentimental or sugary family friendly beigeness!! (A challenge folks… Come on give us something different. Give us something that makes us feel weird and uncomfortable. Let’s bomb out Christmas stories. Be inspired by those old black and white unsettling films that were so out of place on Christmas night but made us all feel alive.)

It is a privilege to continue publishing Tom Sheehan’s writing. Nik and myself have put ourselves out there again and we have a new person. A writer with a very different structure to his story. We welcome Adam Kluger.

We are working hard through the submissions this week and it is excellent to have so much interest but please don’t let up, keep submitting.

A last mention about the anthology. We are so happy to see some reviews being posted. Come on… You are all writers, send Amazon a review!

Background
Latest News

Literally Stories – Week 51

typewriter

Before we begin I am sure that all of us here at Literally Stories wish to convey our deepest sympathies to the people of Paris. The unfolding story was more of a horror than anyone could ever write.

Our thoughts are with you all.

I sent for a copy of the anthology and was very happy to receive it this week. There is nothing better than the look, feel and smell of a new book, especially one that you have been involved with. I hope that all our writers, their families and friends ask the old boy with the white beard to bring them one in a few weeks time. (I refuse to mention that time of year without Prozac.) It is a privilege to champion the short story not only on a daily basis but now with something more concrete.

Our stories this week were another mixed bag. We had sadness from both our new writers, Sarah Walker and Ronald Friedman. Tom Sheehan put together a tale with a twist. Nik gave us a bit of future-thinking satire and I questioned acceptance.

We have had quite a few submissions from new writers this week and we are in the process of reading and deciding. So if you are reading this and thinking ‘Mmm, I wonder?’ Stop wondering and send! It is a pure delight for us to find someone who has that new writer enthusiasm!

Last two comments are reiterations… Happy Anniversary to the site in the past week. And of course a huge thanks to all of you for the past year!!

Background
Latest News

Literally Stories – Week 47

typewriter

I am reminded

That the pheno

That is NaNoWriMo

Gets under way shortly.

Right across the globe tens of thousands of fifty thousand-word novels, technically novellas — but let’s not quibble about terminology — will be written during the month of November.

For all those (Diane Dickson I mean you!) of a mathematically averse nature, look away now…

Convert those 50K words into Literally Stories short story fiction and that weighs in at the equivalent of at least 30 short stories or one short story per day.

Give or take a Drabble.

For someone who averages 500 words a week this is a tall order indeed therefore I am seeking an extension to the deadline from 30 November to 31 December.

2017.

Plan B is to give NaNoWriMo a miss this year and stick to casting my eye over the week’s goings-on here at LS; trying not to malign the accepted or natural order of days of the week according to the classical planets of Hellenistic astrology.

Continue reading “Literally Stories – Week 47”

Latest News

e-book: Literally Stories – The Anthology

typewriter

When Literally Stories threw open its virtual doors on 16th November 2014 we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for.

A lot of hard work as it turns out.

We published our first story, Post, by Jenny Morton Potts. A year later and somewhere not too far south of reading 1 MILLION words in all the wonderful stories that landed in the LS mail box, we remain very proud of our site.

Our writers. Our, ahem, eclectic oeuvre.

Continue reading “e-book: Literally Stories – The Anthology”

Background
Latest News

Literally Stories – Week 45

typewriter

It has been a busy week. No denying it.

Publishing five stories on the site as is our custom plus preparing to launch Literally Stories — The Anthology: it could be said we gave Ground Control a run for its money.

I am not Major Tom. Neither am I sitting in a tin can but I am feeling a little odd today.

Strained.

Nothing that a breeze through this week’s literary line-up won’t put right.

Continue reading “Literally Stories – Week 45”