What's With Your Shorts?

Image via Crazy for Bargains.

Are your shorts an airless, joyless place

or

a wild, grab 'em by the curlies emotional assault?

I'm reading a bunch from Ellery Queen currently and thinking about using this kind of set-up for my way-out fantasy project. As I'm conceiving it today, some of my content will happen in comic books which typically unspool in serial, some of it as online threads like bogus message boards and wikis (tx, Lois), and some in text format, scene arcs within novellas under a single cover. And, as two of our WOM are about to release their carefully-cut gems into the world- see splashy cover to the right- it seems like a good time to bandy re: the health and well-being of the short story.

As you may have noticed by now, I'm a real Ernestine, with nary an original thought but cadging everything I know from overheard conversations. On this topic, I was referred around to a relevant article I should've noticed before by the Grumpy Old Bookman. The GOB also has more on this topic he's been noticing, and I find him often prescient and always entertaining.

On to the shorts: Stephen King recently edited The Best American Short Stories 2007, and being a glutton, was not content with merely digesting the piles forwarded to him, and scrounged for truffles in the lowest, dankest, darkest 12 inches of the bookstore. There, he took the pulse of the form. Alive? Yes. And well? Let him break it to you.

For myself, I know that, so far, I'm no darned good at understanding what short story editors want, but I do enjoy reading them, and many have made an impact on me that an extended telling might've dulled into forgetfulness.

Do you write or read them? Do you buy them for more than simple marketing tips? What's your thinking about the state of your shorts?