TIH 025: Richard Thomas on The Do’s and Don’ts of Short Story Writing

Richard Thomas

In this podcast Richard Thomas talks about horror writing in Transylvania, sending our horror fiction and what you should and shouldn’t do when writing short stories. 

About Richard Thomas

Richard Thomas is the author of six books—Disintegration and The Breaker (Random House Alibi), Transubstantiate (Otherworld Publications), and two short story collections, Staring Into the Abyss (Kraken Press) and Herniated Roots (Snubnose Press), as well as one novella in The Soul Standard (Dzanc Books). With over 100 stories published, his credits include Cemetery Dance, PANK, Gargoyle, Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Arcadia, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad 2, and Shivers VI (with Stephen King and Peter Straub). He has won contests at ChiZine, One Buck Horror, and Jotspeak and has received five Pushcart Prize nominations to date. He is also the editor of three anthologies: The New Black (Dark House Press), The Lineup (Black Lawrence Press) and Burnt Tongues (Medallion Press) with Chuck Palahniuk. In his spare time he is a columnist at LitReactor and Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press. His agent is Paula Munier at Talcott Notch. For more information visit www.whatdoesnotkillme.com.

Show notes

  • [01:15] About Richard Thomas
  • [06:50] Horror writing in Transylvania
  • [12:05] The attraction of short stories
  • [29:25] Sending work out to different markets and publications
  • [33:55] The broad definition of horror and genre fiction
  • [43:25] Stories as snapshots of a wider picture
  • [46:00] Show don’t tell
  • [49:35] What you shouldn’t do when writing a short story
  • [55:30] Writers to check out

Resources

Richard Thomas fiction (UK)
Richard Thomas fiction (US)
Storyville: 15 Unconventional Story Methods
The Best American Noir of the Century (includes ‘The Paperhanger’ by William Gay)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Come Closer by Sara Gran
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Stephen Graham Jones fiction
Will Christopher Baer fiction
Spent: A Memoir by Antonia Crane
Tampa by Alissa Nutting
The End of Alice by A.M. Homes

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1 comment

  1. Nice interview!

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