Kindle shorts – short stories and novellas for a quick fix of good quality writing

I have weeks when I work away from home a lot and end up staying in a typical budget hotel on my own.  I’ve often found myself watching TV into the wee small hours as I can’t concentrate on a book when I’m by myself.  I’ve talked to colleagues who’ve found the same thing.  At other times when I’m at home, although I like to read in bed before I go to sleep, I find that there are evenings, when I can’t start a new book, or even pick one up that I’m part way through.  It just feels too much like hard work, and my view is that reading should be something I enjoy and not have to work at.

A while ago, almost by accident, I started looking at short stories on Kindle - “Kindle Shorts” - individual short stories or sometimes collections of short stories.  I really like these because there’s a lot of variety in the stories you find, they don’t take too long to read and they’re pretty easy to read because the plots are quite straightforward.  So, at the end of a long day, when I just want a quick read, they’re ideal for me. 

There are also Kindle Singles, which are usually novella length books – they’re longer than the shorts and you may not be able to get through one straight away if it’s around 30,000 words but you’re just after a “quick fix”.  I do think these are worth looking at too.

Who writes them?  Well the good news is that many established writers have produced these, with individual shorts based on existing characters and others, both individual stories and collections of short stories unrelated to any books the author has previously written.  The good news is that they are cheap and often free, with authors using them as a way of “hooking” new readers.  So, in typical Romancrimeblogger style, here are some to look out for!

Peter James – Short shockers   This is probably the one I read that made me realise there was a lot of good stuff to read in short stories through the Kindle.  It’s a fantastic collection of stories, with characters and scenes that have been very well developed, even within the constraints of a short story.  A good one to start with.

M R Hall – The Innocent  This short story introduces Jenny Cooper, and provides some of the backstory to his series of books featuring Coroner Jenny Cooper.  In this short, Cooper is still working for Social Services and an innocent, but well meaning offer of help to a young person, brings her under the Coroner’s spotlight.  It’s a very well written short story and worth reading whether you’ve read any of the Cooper books before or if you’re wanting to try M R Hall to see if the Coroner series is worth reading.

Mark Billingham – Dancing towards the blade    I was quite intrigued when I found this as I didn’t expect Billingham to write short stories (although I don’t really know why I thought that!) This collection ranges from a confrontation with racist thugs in London to two people meeting perhaps by chance in a hotel in Texas.  Each story is very different and has interesting surprises for the reader.

Stuart Macbride –  Partners in Crime  This contains two short stories Bad Heir Day and Stramash, featuring Macbride’s characters Logan and Steel.  These are amusing, tongue in cheek and at times almost slapstick stories.  I’d say these are written for fun and not to be taken too seriously, but nevertheless really entertaining.

Elly Griffiths - Ruth's First Christmas Tree   A 41 page short story featuring Elly Griffith’s character, forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway.  Ruth “doesn’t do Christmas”, but with her daughter now a year old, and a new boyfriend on the scene, she wants to make this a special Christmas.  It should be quite simple, but, the best laid plans…

Stephen Leather – Inspector Zhang and others   Leather is a prolific short story writer that unashamedly uses short stories as a way of hooking readers, with many of his stories free giveaways.  He has two sets of characters; those he uses exclusively for short stories – Inspector Zhang and Bangkok Bob, as well as his established characters Spider Shepherd and Jack Nightingale, that feature in shorts as well as full length novels.  Interestingly, he’s used the Zhang character to resurrect the old fashioned locked room mystery – if you like these, then the Inspector Zhang’s could be for you.

Other authors that I think are worth looking out for in “shorts” include Brian McGilloway (Stolen child), Quentin Bates (Winterlude featuring his character Gunnhilder), Linda Castillo (Gone missing) Simon Kernick (Wrong time, wrong place and The debt) and a nice surprise for Lee Child fans - High heat with Jack Reacher.

There is also a Murder Squad anthology of short stories (Best Eaten Cold and Other Stories) which has been out in paperback, but is excellent value on Kindle (£1.79 on 21 September 2013)

I think there’s going to be a lot more of this kind of thing appearing.  These shorts usually go direct to Kindle and as they don’t have the normal publishing overheads, can be either free or very cheap to buy. This is good for both authors and readers, especially as it widens the range of available material, some of which would never have been published via the normal print route.  Here’s a link to a recent newspaper article talking about shorts, that you might find interesting:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/05/amazon-kindle-singles-short

Finally, if you’ve not read these type of books before, my suggestion would be to download some free ones on your Kindle first and keep them for that time when you want a quick read to see how they work out for you.  That way it costs nothing and could open up a new reading niche for you.

Happy reading

Romancrimeblogger