Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Lone Star Stories, 2005
Lone Star Stories <http://literary.erictmarin.com>, is edited by Eric Marin, and features three short stories and some poetry each issue. It has appeared bimonthly since the start of 2004, with admirable regularity, so 12 issues so far, 6 of them in 2005.
The six issues each included 18 stories, one a novelette, the other short stories. Five of the short stories were short-shorts. A total of just under 60,000 words of fiction.
My favorite stories were "A Treatise on Fewmets", by Sarah Prineas, "Manuscript Found Written in the Paw Prints of a Stoat", by Samantha Henderson, and "The Hero and the Princess" by Sherwood Smith. The first of these is a sweet romantic comedy about a Professor of Elemental Studies who has to deal with a dragon in a dotty old lady's garden. Henderson's story is a strange piece about a mysterious young person -- not quite a human -- looking for a husband. Strange and affecting and original. Smith's story is a down-to-earth piece about a young man who thinks heroism is simple and based on prowess with a sword and how he learns otherwise. Prineas and Henderson and Sandra McDonald and Jay Lake are regulars, and all contributed more than one solid story this year. The single shortish novelette, Mikal Trimm's "Book of the Flagellants", was also pretty good.
