Review: "Be a Sadist..."
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 22, 2014
“Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” --Kurt Vonnegut (master story teller in a quote about short stories).  “Stories for the Dead of Night”  is a good book to ponder the  intricacies of short story writing.  There are five different authors and they certainly took Vonnegut's advice because each character, whether for good or not-so-good, reveals a secret soul in each story.  It is definitely a great book to read in the dead of night, especially for insomniacs.  “Writing a full-length novel is much easier than writing a short story, especially a good one. In a novel, there is more time to develop the characters.”--me (in a previous review of Karen Black's “The Hunted”).  The five authors made the greatest use of the confining short story space by immediately developing characters, without giving away the denouement.  Most of the stories had a surprise twist making us think, “Wow!” or “I would not have expected this ending.”  Here are the authors and one story that I especially liked from each, although all the stories are excellent:  Karen Black's “A Candle in the Darkness”; Robert L. Arend's “Snow Globe”; Jennifer J. Arend's “Unfinished Business”; Brittany Joy Chadwick's “IF”; and Catherine A. MacKenzie's “Molly Mulligan.”  So glad I received this as a gift because of the wonderful talent in one book!