There’s a tremendous amount of fiction out there to read. And the Internet has increased the number of outlets for publishing by an order of magnitude. One of these days I should count average out how many short stories I read a week. I write reviews of story collections for The Short Review (www.theshortreview.com), I am active at Zoetrope, an on-line work-shopping site, I read stories each week from two local writers groups, and now from my new friends from the 2009 Sewanee Writers Conference. Then there are the “published” stories I read in The New Yorker, Narrative, the Atlantic, and several other pubs.

Oddly enough, one of the best stories I ever read from a fellow “amateur” fiction writer was the one that followed mine in my first publication credit, Rainbow Curve (Issue 5, 2004), www.rainbowcurve.com . Matt Getty was the author. I’ve since been looking for and reading his stuff. The other day, I picked up a collection at the bookstore, Best of the Web 2009, or something like that, and I was sitting at a park bench taking a break from my bike ride here in the city of St. Louis and what do you know? Matt had a story in there! I had read the story at one of the on-line journals a while ago. Anyway, “When my girlfriend lost the weight” is a really, really good story. You can find Matt here. http://gettydrafts.blogspot.com/. Check him out. He also has music and videos. He’s a writer to watch. I’ve never met him but I have emailed him a few times. One day, I will like the fact that one of my stories shows up next to one of his. In the meantime, I’ll be looking  for a contact high.