I entered my story Bogieman into a competition for long short stories because I wanted to see if it would get shortlisted, and I thought that if it did, then I was managing okay with this new, to me, form of writing. I have sensed the long short story making a comeback for a couple of years now, but quite how I gravitated towards that length in my own work, I don’t know. Perhaps it was a subconscious thing… I’ve certainly never been attracted to flash fiction.
But what happened was that Bogieman, was one of the two winners of the New Fictions Prize. So it turns out, although I found myself having to ask for details about the prize, that the story will become a ‘novella’ and be printed as a book… I don’t know, maybe it’ll come out next year. I do want it eventually go back into the long short story collection Whelp and Other Stories, that I haven’t a publisher for yet, but as one of the Gatehouse Press workers/members/editors explained, by the time Gatehouse was done with Bogieman, a year after publication, it could go back in the collection. The timing should work. So, in the meanwhile, congratulations to the other winner Amanthi Harris for Lantern Evening which I’m looking forward to reading on publication.
http://www.gatehousepress.com/2016/04/new-fictions-winners/