This is the July, 2006, newsletter from Short Stories at Bella Online.
Here is an article featured last month at Short Stories, a classic short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Read YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN.
Here are a couple of stories featured at Strange Horizons.
At the hostess stand, Jan was smiling and flapping her hand like a spastic penguin. Before her was a huge black-and-white black man. I mean, he was black, racially, but he seemed to be colorless, like an old black-and-white movie. Read Waiting on Alexandre Dumas by William Davis.
She looked stretched tight too—something had her nervous, and it wasn't the killer across the table. Dark eyes flickered toward the window, and the night beyond. Read Dogtown by Amanda Downum.
Two short stories featured at Fiction Warehouse:
He had become quite adept at breathing quietly, secretly, sometimes hardly breathing at all. He would practice when his mother wasn't close by. He would imagine that he was gliding slowly through the cool dark water as if it was his air, his enormous body graceful in its weightlessness as he hunted octopus. But every so often he would catch a glimpse of a tentacle being sucked back into the blackness of a good hiding place and the doubts would begin to build. The questions. How badly did he want to breathe? Read an unpleasant lot by antonios maltezos.
The bedroom smelled of Sundays before church - newspaper ink, cooking oil, dust - reminding her of when she was a child. A ghost-image of her grandfather sat in the corner, cracking the top of a soft boiled egg on a porcelain stand with a spoon. Read morning ritual by margo note.
Featured at East of the Web:
Gramma fusses about getting ready for Camp Meeting this year, even though she has it organized down to the last baked bean and roll of toilet paper. She's been going every year since she was born, 1939, and so I guess she knows what's needed, but she really gets into the whole 'tradition' thing. I'll try to stick in something new, like my Walkman or Gameboy, and she just throws a hissy fit. "That's not what Camp Meeting is about," she says, packing her sun tea jar and a bag of lemons. "It's about family, and Jesus, and knowing why the good Lord put us on earth. Now where did you put the Skip-Bo cards?" Read a short story by Carolyn Steele Agosta:
She'd always been a difficult woman: manipulative would be an understatement—in fact "absolute bitch" hardly covers the territory she staked out for herself. She strutted her stuff on a narrow stage—no Hollywood actress could play a better bitch-queen. Read a short story by Kay Sexton:
If you have any comments or questions, email me at shortstories@bellaonline.com. Also feel free to drop by the Short Stories Forum to drop a message or post some fiction. With your help, I am sure Short Stories will be a very successful section of BellaOnline.
Sharon Cullars
