Short Stories 366:150 — “The Book of Martha,” by Octavia Butler

Oh wow. From Year's Best Fantasy 4, a delightful find in an old paperback I picked up on vacation on a rainy day, this story has so very much going on in it, but is at its core just a conversation between Martha, a writer, and God. She's just somehow, suddenly, standing there with God. …

Short Stories 366:143 — “King Dragon,” by Michael Swanwick

Part of the reason I began this project to chat about a short story a day was to give myself a carrot to dangle over the piles of collections and anthologies I've bought over the years where I've read some or a few of the stories (often the tales by people I know or authors …