‘Pushed Buttons’ by David Hartley

“Liz put her father-in-law in the lift, pushed the button, and watched as he was taken away.”

This is a great story from one of my closest friends; we’ve been in a fiction writing group together for over 10 years. I wouldn’t be writing fiction if it wasn’t for Dave inviting me to join what we call the ‘Gaslamp Writers’ (named for the iconic subterranean Manchester pub we used to meet in every month, often to the background noise a group of sword-dancers practising in the next room). Dave is a lovely person who can write surprisingly nasty stories – this is one with a particularly sharp set of teeth.

I love the way this story uses structure to let its momentum build and build, to reveal truths beneath truths about its characters. I’ll let you discover this terrible father-in-law and even more frightening lift for yourselves…

First published in Electric Literature, 2023, and available to read online here

‘The Correct Hanging of Game Birds’ by Rosie Garland

Rosie Garland (another friend, who was also my magnificent mentor for a while) is rightfully known for her weird and wonderful tales and writes novels and poetry as well as short stories.

This is a beautiful example of an innovative use of form, and also what can be achieved when a short story is written really sparingly, allowing the reader to fill in the gaps to work out what’s really going on. It’s a brilliant little horror story that lingered with me long after I read it, and I think this section is particularly note-perfect:

“Lock the dog in the yard, to stop it lapping up the puddles that collect under the carcasses. Ignore the neighbours complaining they can’t sleep. The smile that shuts them up faster than any bellowed argument. The way they shrink away.”

First published in X-R-A-Y, 2020, and available to read online here

‘The Husband Stitch’ by Carmen Maria Machado

This one might be familiar to lots of you (and will almost certainly have appeared on other people’s lists!). Carmen Maria Machado’s stories felt revelatory when I first read her collection Her Body and Other Parties. I love how it starts with directly addressing the reader, like she’s directing the staging of a play, giving you instructions on what to see in your mind’s eye and hear in your head that you can choose to obey or ignore. Her work has so much confidence and swagger, it’s very charismatic!

It’s this mesmerising quality of showmanship, I think, which is so appealing about her work, and which makes even the retelling of a familiar fairytale feel so startling and fresh. She even tells you, right near the start: “This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them.”

First published online in Granta in 2014 and available to read here. Collected in Her Body And Other Parties, Graywolf/Serpent’s Tail, 2019

‘Skin’ by Daniel Carpenter

“He imagined for a moment, what it would be like to be a Skinship, to have spent so long in space, only to return. Space giving way to atmosphere and cloud and then the lights of cities and the cold night black of towns and villages and there, somewhere far below, hundreds of little yellow fires, guiding the way like landing beacons. Would someone be waiting for him?”

Dan is another member of our Gaslamp writers group, and his new collection of horror stories, Hunting by the River, is not to be missed. I love this story because it really showcases what his writing does best: dark, dystopian stories that never fail to twist the knife, paired with an incredibly detailed and immersive sense of place – in this case, a frightening and futuristic Manchester.

‘Skin’ by Daniel Carpenter (First published in Manchester Climate Monthly, 2013, and available to read online here)

‘Alysm’ by Irenosen Okojie

I discovered Irenosen Okojie’s writing when a version of this story appeared alongside mine in an anthology of speculative fiction inspired by true stories about women’s bodies, called Disturbing the Body from Boudicca Press. This story is the most impactful and affecting responses to the early days of the pandemic that I’ve come across.

“There is a lump in my throat. I sense an alien force hijacking my system. I feel it moving inside me. My body is no longer mine alone. It is a host for something malevolent.”

First published in The London Magazine, 2021, and available online here; also published in Disturbing The Body, Boudica Press, 2021

‘Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness’ by Reshma Ruia

“‘Before you go, make sure to mop the bathroom floor.’ Mrs Ibrahim’s voice is distracted.
‘Yes, madam,’ Mrs Pinto says. They both know she has cleaned the entire house from attic to cellar that very morning.”

Reshma and I have the same publisher for our short story collections, the small but mighty Dahlia Press, run by the brilliant Farhana Shaikh. I’ve heard Reshma read this story a few times at various literary events and I’m always excited to hear it again – I feel like I get more from it every time. The characters feel so real and fully formed that this little story packs as much into it as some whole novels, but leaves you wanting to turn the page and read on.

Collected in Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness, Dahlia Press, 2021

‘Rebecka’ by Karin Tidbeck

“I don’t know why I remained her friend. It’s not like I got anything out of it. It was the worst kind of friendship, held together by pity.”

Karin Tidbeck’s wonderful collection Jagganath was one of the first contemporary short story collections I owned – long before I ever thought about publishing one myself.

This story is deliciously horrible – about a woman who God isn’t allowing to kill herself, no matter how hard she tries. Like all the best horror stories, it’s got a brilliant sting in its tale, and an ending that makes you go ‘ah’.

First published in Swedish in Vem är Arvid Pekon, Man av Skugga Förlag, 2010, and in English in Jagannath, Cheeky Frawg, 2012; reprinted in Nightmare, 2014, where it is available to read, here

‘Simon Wants To Be A Magician’ by Michael Conley

“After lunch, the teacher asks: ‘Children, is it possible to make something invisible and, if so, how might you achieve that?’”

Another story that was easy to choose because it’s unforgettable – but that is a common feature of Michael Conley’s work! He’s an absolute master of creating memorable and iconic characters in just a few words, and there’s often a brilliant twist waiting for you just when you think you’ve got your bearings.

It’s so tempting to quote the last line of this tiny flash fiction, but I won’t, because it’s much more fun if you read it yourself.

First published in Everyday Fiction, 2023, and available to read online here

‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ by M. R. James

Lots of you will already know this one… in my opinion, it’s one of the finest ghost stories ever written. I also recommend the absolutely wonderful 2013 BBC adaptation starring John Hurt and Gemma Jones, which still keeps me up at night when I think about it!

Originally published in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Edward Arnold, 1910

‘There Is No-One In The Lab Tonight But Mice’ by Tania Hershman

“The scientists are painting. The scientists have taken up sculpture, dancing, rock-climbing, abseiling. No-one knows why the scientists are on strike. Not just some scientists, but every scientist.”

Another very good friend of mine, who has also taught me in many inspiring and sometimes disconcerting writing workshops over the years, and from whom I’ve learned so much about craft and curiosity and letting go of expectations and most especially the word ‘should’.

I wanted to leave you with this story which really lodged itself in my imagination, and both reveals and obscures its message in all the right ways. The whole collection it comes from opened my mind to new forms that a short story could take and things it could ask of its readers. Order yourself a copy, you won’t regret it.

Collected in Some of Us Glow More Than Others, Unthank Books, 2017

Introduction

This year, I’ve been writing a short story a month to send in the mail to friends on their birthdays. Part of the impetus was the exercise of it: I work well with deadlines, I like to play and stretch on a craft level, and I like the opportunity for productive distractions from the exciting-exhausting process of working on a novel. I was also inspired by Isaac Butler’s article about John M. Ford from Slate several years ago, where he mentions that Ford famously produced a lot of work in the form of curiosities he sent to his friends—short stories on Christmas cards, villanelle blog comments, etc. It struck me as a way to put some magic into the world, to create things not in order to sell or otherwise further my ‘career’ but rather to surprise and delight the people I care about. If some of those stories have a life after the fact, great; if only eight people ever read them and most of them toss the chapbook after doing so, that’s great too. 

The only constraint I gave myself besides the monthly cadence was that the stories should all be set in or around a fictional small town in the Catskills, modeled on the towns I live near but distinctly magical as well. Beyond that, I could do what I wished, and so some of the stories were straightforward fiction, while others took Oulipian forms like a choose-your-own-adventure chapbook or a shuffleable read-in-any-order packet or a fully-produced hour-long radio show. I like to think that I’ve put some magic into the world this year—and so here are a dozen stories that have brought me magic and shaped these stories I’ve been writing:

‘Homecoming’ by Ray Bradbury

From the Dust Returned is, in a lot of ways, the book of my heart. I’ve written about my love for it before and probably will again after this, too. It’s a fix-up featuring some stories that Bradbury originally wrote to—get this—pair with illustrations by none other than Charles Addams, about a strange and wondrous family. That project fell apart but I find it very charming that the two men went on to create their own iterations of the idea. This particular story is the centerpiece of the book and I think it is also one of Bradbury’s very best, managing to capture the excitement and slight terror of being a child looking at the magical world of grown-ups. It’s a story that I’m always, in one way or another, writing towards.

First published in Mademoiselle, October 1946. Collected in From the Dust Returned, William Morrow, 2001

‘Skullpocket’ by Nathan Ballingrud

This story was my introduction to Nathan Ballingrud and I come back to it about once a year. It certainly wasn’t the first “strange town” story I read, but it came into my life around the time I was starting to get serious about writing—and so I credit it with being The One that planted the seed in my head of wanting to create a strange town of my own. There are rumors that Ballingrud plans to return to Hob’s Landing someday with either a series of novellas or a collection of stories or something else altogether; whatever the form, I certainly hope he does it, as I’ll be waiting eagerly until then.

First published in Nightmare Carnival, Dark Horse Books 2014. Collected in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2014, HMH, 2014, and in Wounds, Saga Press, 2019. Read it online here

‘The Transformation of Martin Lake’ by Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is probably my favorite living writer and I’m hard-pressed to choose favorites from his work, but stories set in the city of Ambergris will always have a soft spot in my heart. (See above, re: my live of strange towns.) ‘Transformation’ builds out aspects of the most important and too-often overlooked part of a fictional city: the arts scene. I read this story for the first time when I was 18 years old and it felt like grabbing lightning; I’ve not been the same since. Jeff has also been a friend to me over the years and while very little of what I write feels like his work, I don’t think I’d be a writer without his example to follow.

First published in Palace Corbie Eight, 1999. Collected in City of Saints and Madmen, Wildside Press, 2001. Listen to it here