«The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting» [Arthur Schopenhauer]
Since 2008, Be-a-Better-Writer.com has aimed to cultivate interest in Canadian and International fiction from new and emerging writers. They publish a broad range of adjudicated fiction, selected for its originality and craftmanship.
Online Anthology →
Be-a-Better-Writer.com houses a continually growing library of original short stories submitted by new and emerging writers around the globe.
⇑ Short stories, legends & sagas
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¤ Fredric Brown (1906 – 1972) was an American Science Fiction and Mystery author. Best known for his use of humor and for his mastery of what we’d now call “flash fiction,” Brown specialized in ingenious plotting devices and surprise endings.
•→ Answer ←
•→ Solipsist ←
•→ Hobbyist ←
•→ Imagine ←
•→ Two Timer ←
•→ Arena ←
• Knock ↓ (by FREDRIC BROWN)
«The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…»
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Fredric BrownProfessor Jones had worked on the problem of time for many years. ‘But at last I’ve found the answer,’ he said to his daughter. ‘This machine can take us into the past.’ He pushed a button on the machine. ‘This ought to make time go backwards.’ ‘Backwards go time make to ought this.’ Machine the on button a pushed he. ‘Past the into us take can machine this.’ Daughter his to said he, ‘Answer the found I’ve last at but.’ Years many for time of problem the on worked had Jones Professor. Brown Fredric End The Θ
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Δ Richard Gary Brautigan [1935-1984] was an American writer often noted for using humor and emotion to propel a unique vision of hope and imagination throughout his body of work which includes ten books of poetry, eleven novels, one collection of short stories, and miscellaneous non-fiction pieces. His easy-to-read yet idiosyncratic prose style is seen as the best characterization of the cultural electricity prevalent in San Francisco, Brautigan’s home, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the ebbing of the Beat Generation and the emergence of the counterculture movement. Brautigan’s best-known works include his novel, Trout Fishing in America (1967), his collection of poetry, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster (1968), and his collection of stories, Revenge of the Lawn (1971).
¤ BRAUTIGAN.net is a definitive resource about Brautigan’s life and writings. Information about all his known work is collected, organized, presented, and preserved here, along with reviews and criticism, memoirs, tributes, and other information. A chronology of Brautigan’s life provides a context for his writings.
•→ The Brautigan Library ← Is a unique collection of 291 unpublished manuscripts written by authors from thirty one states, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, India, and Saudi Arabia, is a permanent, interactive exhibit in the Clark County Historical Museum, the former 1909 Andrew Carnegie library building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, USA.
Inspired by a fictional library described by Richard Brautigan in his 1971 novel, The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966, The Brautigan Library was meant to provide writers a public shelf for their unpublished manuscripts, free of restrictions on content or quality.
¤ “Slippery Ice”
One of her favorite pastimes during the winter months is to sit out on the balcony and watch people fall down on the ice.Some people simply lose their equilibriums. Their arms shoot out to counterbalance, and their feet remain beneath them. At this she lets out a sigh, not of relief, but of regret that they didn’t fall. Other people fall down. Their arms and legs flail uselessly in the air and they land hard on knee, hip, or butt. At this she lets out a hearty chuckle, amused. There came a day when someone simply flat fuck fell. She was smiling before he even hit the ground. She was smiling at the look on his face as he went down. That look of someone who has perceived his doom yet is powerless to prevent it. She was bent over double laughing hysterically when the ambulance came. ›
•→ Listen to short stories from the collection Revenge of the Lawn⇐, read by the author.
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¤ The Lamentations of Ian Frazier
Frazier is the author of eight books. He published a collection of humor essays, ⇒“Lamentations of the Father” ⇐,in 2008. Frazier lives in New Jersey and has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1974.
«It’s sort of hard to be true to writing humor because you know how perishable it is.» Ian Frazier
⇑ HOW TO OPERATE THE SHOWER CURTAIN
Δ Travels in Siberia ←[click for an excerpt]
In Travels in Siberia, Ian Frazier trains his eye for unforgettable detail on Siberia, that vast expanse of Asiatic Russia. He explores many aspects of this storied, often grim region, which takes up one-seventh of the land on earth. He writes about the geography, the resources, the native peoples, the history, the forty-below midwinter afternoons, the bugs.
The book brims with Mongols, half-crazed Orthodox archpriests, fur seekers, ambassadors of the czar bound for Peking, tea caravans, German scientists, American prospectors, intrepid English nurses, and prisoners and exiles of every kind – from Natalie Lopukhin, banished by the czarina for copying her dresses; to the noble Decembrist revolutionaries of the 1820s; to the young men and women of the People’s Will movement whose fondest hope was to blow up the czar; to those who met still-ungraspable suffering and death in the Siberian camps during Soviet times.
More than just a historical travelogue, Travels in Siberia is also an account of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union and a personal reflection on the all-around amazingness of Russia.
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⇓ Deborah Eisenberg
In conversation, Eisenberg is effusive and tangential, but she returns repeatedly to a list of liberal grievances against the US administration. Iraq, Afghanistan, New Orleans and the conspiracies of corporate America are all favoured topics.
Her severest term of abuse is «trivial». It is this anger, quietly voiced, that gives her writing its power. Her short stories are remarkable for their sensitivity to the ways in which politics has permeated all aspects of American life.
«The world we live in has been and is being increasingly politicised so that our daily experience is more and more a matter of public policy,» she says. «A lot of fiction comes out of a child’s feeling of, ‘Hey, that’s not fair.’ «
This is interestingly just the thing I’ve been looking for! Wonderful and cheers!