Three top fiction reads of 2023
November 1, 2023 § Leave a comment
I put together a list of three of the books I most enjoyed reading this year for this cool literary organization called Shepherd, which has been conceived as a competitor to Goodreads. Some time ago I compiled my list of the best historical novels of early colonial New England; this year they asked me to compile my three top fiction reads.
I think it’s important for writers and readers to support organizations that are trying to get the word out about good books. For one thing, it’s a way to circumvent the powerful media channels dominated by conglomerate publishing; instead of the books they say we should be reading, why not listen to each other? Word of mouth, not well-funded marketing campaigns, after all, is a much more reliable way to find good books.
Of course anyone who loves to read is going to be relying to a major extent on the conglomerates; it’s just baked into the system. I try to buy books from small and independent presses whenever possible, but many of my favorites were put out by the Big 5 corporate imprints. And while it’s true that Goodreads is owned by the Amazon corporate empire, Goodreads and Amazon offer some of the best (and often the only) ways for relatively unknown writers to make their books discoverable to the world at large. This is why I’m pretty assiduous about rating and briefly reviewing the books I’ve read and enjoyed on these sites—and if you care about books and authors, you should too!
Still, Shepherd is a refreshing upstart, and I love what they’re doing for books and authors, so I tend to respond when they approach me to make this kind of list. Enjoy!
Tim Weed’s 3 favorite reads of 2023
The best historical novels of early colonial New England
New story out with Fairlight Shorts
October 19, 2023 § Leave a comment
Happy to announce that my new fiction, “Under the Highway,” is now out with Fairlight Shorts, a branch of Fairlight Books. This story is part of my collection-in-progress, working title Tickets to the Reckoning, and was also awarded a prize in the 2023 Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition.
For those of you that knew me growing up, please know that this is fiction, and any resemblance to actual living people isn’t intended and shouldn’t be inferred. I hope you enjoy it!
Good news from the 92nd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Awards
August 2, 2023 § Leave a comment
Happy to report that two unpublished short stories have earned nods in the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition (Eighth Place & Honorable Mention, Mainstream/Literary Short Story category). The stories, “Under the Highway” and “Seabirds,” are part of a collection, Tickets to the Reckoning, that’s currently being shopped around to publishers. Hopefully it will be available for your reading pleasure soon!
New short fiction up at Pangyrus
January 18, 2023 § Leave a comment
‘Today a flock of crows has gathered. Half a dozen of the birds with their glossy blue-black feathers, come to peck at beetles he supposes, or some other small insect involved in the decomposition of dead matter. He strides up to the crows, brandishing his cane.
“Bugger off, now! This is a burial site, not a feeding place for scavengers!”
The crows tilt their heads to stare up at him. Their obsidian eyes are insolent, almost bored-looking, by the sight of the heavy filigreed cane-head whistling through the air above them.
“Very well, then. But don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.”
He takes careful aim and swings. The crows flap off, but one wheels, cawing and swooping belligerently back down at him. He aims the cane and swings again, and this time he feels the jolt of an actual connection. The crow lets out a low grunt as it flips to the ground, one black wing jutting out from its broken body as it struggles to get up from the hemlock needles.
He brings the cane-head down on the crow’s skull; it collapses with an audible crunch, like a boiled egg. He draws the blade and skewers the creature’s broken body, walking it up into the forest where he digs a little trench in the sodden ground, kicks some leaves over it, and wipes the blade clean.
That’s more like it now, he says to himself, sheathing the blade as he walks down toward the house. You just have to confront them one by one.“
Read the whole story here. Listen to a brief audio piece about the historical figure who inspired the story here.
Three stories short-listed for the Tobias Wolff Award in Fiction
May 25, 2022 § 2 Comments
Received a nice bit of good news today: three of the stories in my collection-in-progress (working title: Tickets to the Reckoning) were chosen as finalists in the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction (judged blind, sponsored by Bellingham Review). This is the first time multiple stories of mine have had that distinction in any contest, and this is a prestigious one. I’ll take it as a good omen!
New longlists/shortlists
September 9, 2021 § Leave a comment
A cynic might say something like “always the bridesmaid, never the bride,” but I’ve never been a cynic and I’m pleased to report these recent honors:
Semi-Finalist, 2021 Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize, for a novel, THE HAVANA STANDARD
Finalist, 2021 Southern Humanities Review Editors Chapbook Prize, for a novelette, AMONG THE MONOLITHS
Honorable Mention, 2021 Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition (Mainstream/Literary), for a short story, VIRGIN OF THE APOCALYPSE
Honorable Mention, 2021 Cisco Writing Club, Annual Summer Writing Contest (Short Stories), for a short story, SKIN MONKEYS
None of these works has been published yet. Stay tuned!
Two new reviews for A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing
January 17, 2019 § Leave a comment
So pleased to see that positive reviews for the collection continue to trickle in. The two most recent are from the Midwest Book Review and Trout Fisherman, a magazine based in Great Britain. Both reviews are excerpted below. You can read more excerpts and follow links to ALL known reviews here.
“This collection of stories by Tim Weed is grounded in the specificity of its settings, all of which contain hazards of one kind or another: a mountain lake, a jungle peak, an Amazonian river, a prairie giving way to construction, a seashore suddenly overcome by the tide, a city stuck in the past, a snowy slope (or two). But it is also full of mystery, and much of the mystery is cosmic . . . It is written so deftly, with such a light touch, that suspense builds in each story like a gathering storm.” — Patrick Joyce, Midwest Book Review
“Like other talented writers in this genre, Weed is not hampered by the brevity of the medium . . . His denouements are unpredictable and sometimes even merely hinted at, leaving the reader to fall back on his or her own imagination as to how the tale ends, which sounds frustrating but is actually quite a tantalizing device.” — Trout Fisherman (UK)
Order the paperback, ebook, or audiobook at your favorite independent bookstore or IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Audible. Limited first-edition hardcovers can still be ordered from these fine independent booksellers!
Literary Roadhouse Podcast: Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever.”
December 20, 2018 § Leave a comment
A heartfelt thanks to Anais Concepción, the smart & effervescent host of Literary Roadhouse, a weekly podcast on a public-domain short story. It’s a fun and lively podcast with the noble mission of celebrating the short story form, and I had a very good time hosting a recent episode on Edith Wharton’s masterpiece, “Roman Fever.” You can listen to the podcast here—and to a wide-ranging follow-up conversation on video between Anais and me about nature, Will Poole’s Island, a career combining writing and travel, National Geographic, Cuba, my goals of as a teacher of writing, the need to break writing “rules,” new writing projects, history as a foreign country, escapism, and more. Watch the video interview here.
“Diamondback Mountain” out at Craft Literary
December 14, 2018 § Leave a comment
Happy to report the release of “Diamondback Mountain,” the final previously unpublished story in the fiction collection A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing. The folks at Craft have done a beautiful job and I’m happy that they’re hosting this story, which holds a great deal of personal significance for me, as explained in the author’s note. In the story, a young ski instructor at a remote hotel in 1930s Colorado falls in love with a rising Italian movie star, but fate conspires to keep the couple apart. Read the full story here.
New short fiction out
November 25, 2018 § Leave a comment
A freshly-minted short story (one of the first to appear post-A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing) is out in Western Press Books’ wonderful new anthology, Manifest West: Transitions & Transformations. The story is titled “Gunnison Gorge.” It concerns a lonely traveler who gives a ride to a mysterious couple on his way to a remote fly fishing river in a wilderness area of central Colorado. He worries that the woman may be in some kind of trouble, and believes himself well-positioned to do something about it.
To read “Gunnison Gorge,” at least for now, you have to order the anthology. But that’s a great thing to do anyway, especially if you want to support literature and/or are interested in writing about the contemporary American west!
Tim Weed 