J.W. Donley

Tag: short stories

  • Story Study: Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart

    Story Study: Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart

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    Welcome to the second installment of Story Study! Where I and a few friends plan to read a story out of a Year’s Best anthology, and discuss what makes that story tick. The first anthology I’m taking on is Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Volume 1. Fellow authors Evelyn Freeling (https://www.evelynfreeling.com/)…

  • Five Stories Ya Gotta Read – June 2020

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    This is the start of a brand-new series of blog posts. Each month I will share with you five stories that I’ve read recently that you should look into. ‘Wilderness’ by Letitia Trent from Exigencies ed. Richard Thomas Recently I took a course on contemporary dark fiction, and this is the first short story we…

  • Five Stories Ya Gotta Read – July 2020

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    It’s time for another Five Stories Ya Gotta Read! ‘Rust and Bones’ by Craig Davidson from The New Black ed. Richard Thomas. This was my very first read of anything by Craig Davidson. It is the vivid story of a broken boxer’s life. You feel every bone crunching punch and the blood spray from head…

  • 20 Short Stories That Inform and Influence My Fiction

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    Occasionally, someone will ask me what stories and authors influence my writing. That is a difficult question. Really, everything a writer reads in some way influences our writing. It all pushes or pulls our work in some direction. When I read a story that doesn’t work for me, I learn that I should not attempt…

  • What’s It Like To Take A Long Intensive Writing Course?

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    My Contemporary Dark Fiction writing and reading class is finally over. Well, almost over. I still have a couple assignments to turn in and I owe critiques on my classmates’ stories. Want to know what it was like? Is a class like this something for you? Read on to find out. I will have 4…

  • Joe Reviews: Hellboy – An Assortment of Horrors

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    I want to start this review by saying that I love reading Hellboy. I’m not a huge fan of super hero comics, but Hellboy gets a pass. I’ve been reading Hellboy on and off for about a decade and I’ve read most of the other spin off series as well.But enough about the comics. Let’s…

  • Joe Reviews: Cabal by Clive Barker

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    First let me state that I’ve seen both Lord of Illusions and Nightbreed. Both of these movies are based on different stories from this book. I wasn’t really into Nightbreed, but I loved Lord of Illusions. It had something no other horror flick I’d seen as a kid had, occult magic!That movie was based on…

  • The Update – July 2018

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    It has been another month and much has happened since last time I posted. Chuckanut Writer’s Conference The biggest thing being the Chuckanut Writer’s Conference. This was the first writer’s conference I’d ever attended. I made a handful of new writer friends and met a few published authors. I attended quite a few wonderful talks,…

  • May 2018 Update

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    Time is a precious thing. There are only so many hours in a day, so many days in a week, and so on. It is hard to find time for everything I strive to do. Over the last couple months I’ve pared down greatly on blog posts and I even turned off my Patreon account.…

  • {Book Review} Swift to Chase by Laird Barron

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    Before we get into this review I need to let you in on a little secret. Are you ready? Here it is. I may be a bit biased when it comes to works by Laird Barron. There is a bit of history behind this bias. I first came across Laird Barron about a decade ago.…