Given my trouble with (aversion to?) plots, especially in short pieces, I thought this book might help me. It contains 101 stories (1000 word max) by "indie writers", indexed by genre - Horror, etc. It contains lots of mood and gore. Some pieces have a one-liner surprise tacked on. Only a few have endings that are subtly prefigured. I was hoping for more twists and psychological dilemmas. Lindy Moore's "The Little Chill" was fun. David J. Normoyle's "Last Words" had a good twist - the best piece so far. "Masked Attraction" (Jane Campbell) was "Young Adult", though it contained twists lacking in many of the other pieces. "Heiligenloh" didn't seem like a story to me. "One Depressed Angel" by Samuel Clements worked ok, with the kind of punchline I expected to see more of. "Bad Karma" had a decent punch-line too. One story ends with the revelation that one of the characters is Lee Oswald.
Some authors seem to be previously unpublished. The most impressive bio is Ruth Nestvold's - "Ph.D in literature ... sold her first short story to Asimov's ... nominated for Nebula, the Sturgeon, and the Tiptree awards". Another is a "USA Today bestselling author" which is no guarantee that 1000 words are enough. Many of the styles seem not to have been adapted to suit the constraint. Beverly Faris's "Something Worth Keeping" has a plot trajectory which might have worked in a longer piece. Squeezed into a 1000 words, the ending becomes predictable.
Too many pieces read like extracts, or sequences of events without shape. In the "Romance" stories the main character usually begins with a wish that at the end comes true. I expected the pieces categorised as "Literary Fiction" to suit me best. It wasn't so. An exception is "Words by Bob Summer" which has a little twist at the end, but is noteworthy for its portrayal of character - no fantasy or sensationalism.
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