Our short stories
How to hide a world in 4K characters
Before we start speaking about short stories, let’s make a small degression. A few years back, I couldn’t possibly imagine what the books industry would become.
Only a small number of us had access to professional graphics programs at the time and the costs to send a book from the US to Europe were unbearable for many of us. Not to mention the fact that almost no one trusted the Web for purchasing anything.
The Internet Era
Day by day, the entire industry changed. Right now, we are in the Internet Era, where people can choose their dog’s dress by scrolling down their Instagram feed with a thumb. Books started to be a mere good to be sold, like everything else. This, apart from the obvious philosophical implication, can work as an advantage for authors and creators in general.
Too many books?
Therefore, we now have millions of new books out there in the market every year, even though statistics attested that the numbers of readers are dropping consistently year after year. To be honest, we wonder if it was time to publish the book when we did publish Souls Alive and Nodo the chairs’ mover.
But that’s another story.
Let’s take Mr. X
But this isn’t necessarily something wrong. Believe it or not, most of us started to read more than before. Please consider Mr. X, who had to buy a newspaper to read some news about, let’s say, his town or the financial market, back in the days.
And most probably, Mr. X didn’t spend that money on a newspaper, anyway. Now Mr. X has an app on his phone, which gives him every day some update.
Short articles right in his hands, ready to be read at almost no cost!
Furthermore, Mr. X’s children now have access to a lot more content. Videos, right, but not only that. Stories in multiple languages, games, apps.
So, yes, in a way, we read more than before!
And Mr. Y?
For any Mr. X, there’s a Mr. Y. If Mr. X was barely reading his newspaper, Mr. Y was an avid reader.
Philosophy, thrillers, historical books, it didn’t matter. Before going to bed, Mr. Y kept his small light on for a few minutes to read at least a chapter of that book he started.
Now Mr. Y has an app to listen to audiobooks while driving, stuck in the traffic or seated in a metro. Mr. Y is also way more distracted than before, so he decided to read short stories sometimes, instead of the classic novels.
Finally, short stories!
And this is where this section of the website starts to make some sense. We decided to speak to everyone, as real literature has to do. With this in mind, we’re going to publish short stories for adults. Some of them are dark short stories, but we hope you will appreciate them anyway.
Stay assured, writing short stories doesn’t mean we’re going to put less effort into it. If possible, it takes even more time than writing a long story. You need all your characters to be believable and interesting in few lines.
Your story has to start and finish in a few pages.
In a short story, everything has to work perfectly. You don’t have any margin for errors. In a long story, sometimes it happens that some part is better than another. In a short story, you really need to be there all the time for the reader.
You need to catch the attention from page one to page three.
Either you are Mr. or Mrs., Miss or Ms, X or Y, these stories are for you. We want to offer you a world in less than four thousand characters. Some of these stories have been published before in other websites, either in English or in Italian.
So don’t worry if you’ll find it somewhere else.
The author, Daniele Frau, is always the same.
We said a lot, now I really think it’s time to start!
1- The city-the ad. A journalist, a former criminal lawyer, decides to investigate some cases that, on a first look, seem to be absolutely normal.
2. The last smile of the cat. A trapeze artist, called The Cat, and his last moments inside a coffin.
3. A tiny, forgotten, god. An explanation of the Trinity, a long travel for a simple logarithm.
4. Skirt or beard, what do you prefer?
5. A stranger, a camels’ shepherd.
