You know how irritating it is to visit somebody’s blog and click on a link and bam! you’re taken to some advertising site that has nothing to do with what you were looking for? You have encountered a broken link. I hate that. So this morning, for the first time this week, I had a few minutes and decided to check my links. I started with “My Stories”.
How embarrassed was I to find that quite a few of my stories which were available online when I started this blog a year and a half ago are no longer there. Worse still, the online literary magazines that originally published them are not there. As a former editor of a now-defunct literary magazine, this is depressing. As a writer who fought her way into several of these magazines, it’s discouraging. So many of my favorite writers I met online and learned so much from reading their online flash fiction and short stories. Ellen Meister, who I’ve mentioned on here before. If you’ve read The Other Life, Ellen’s latest, you might really enjoy this one: A Crack in the Foundation. And Steven Gullion aka Steve Gullion aka Steven Douglas Gullion. If you want to read some wonderful fiction, Google one of those aliases. Steve has a gift for wrapping tragedy with absurdity or vice versa. Try this one: BiC.
Just recently, one of my flash fiction stories, The Steps My Lover Built, was included in Flash Fiction Chronicles’s list of short stories available online for short story month. On that same list, you can find work from several excellent online literary magazines, including some I was lucky enough to be published in (SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, Word Riot) and some I was never quite got into (Monkeybicycle, elimae, wigleaf). Thankfully, all these online litmags are still available for your perusal. If you’d like to see some excellent fiction, possibly even from tomorrow’s New York Times Bestseller Lists, take a breathing moment and check out the list.
Oh, and if I haven’t mentioned it, I’m number 34.
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 
Don’t look at it that way. If you’ve been in the game long enough that stories have started falling off the radar, it means you’ve got some history under your belt. Broken links are a fact of life when you have a long-running blog; in fact, I have a plugin for my website that detects and manages mine!
You have a couple of novels out (or forthcoming); maybe it’s time to start shopping around a collection?
The thought of a short story collection is slightly frightening to me. It’s like building a house. You have to have enough bricks for a good foundation. I feel like a small child in the writing world, and the thought of building a short story collection with my limited experience is daunting. Maybe someday, though! Thanks, Lincoln. I like your perspective. You have a very good history in the short story world yourself!
Thanks! Just the sheer fact that you’re not over-confident about the process makes it more likely that you’ll succeed at putting a collection together. When you feel up to the task, drop me a line if you need any help!
Thanks for the shout out for FFC! I agree about how lit mags disappear but the work these eds do is amazing! We’re all lucky to be part of this online movement! Glad to know you have work coming out. Will be on the look out
Thanks, Gay!