Short-Shorts: How a group assignment became a promotion tool
Short-Shorts: How a group assignment became a promotion tool By A. R. Grobbo Some years ago a member of my writers’ group came up with an idea for a story that he put to us as a homework assignment: a funeral director conducts a free burial to atone for a mistake. I came up with a plot that would suit my chief sleuth, Gloria Trevisi, to a T (for Trevisi, of course). I took inspiration from a news story, and away it ran. The result was “ the Funeral of Homer Snape ”, a single-scene suspense, and since we try to keep our writers’ group assignments reasonably short, it was barely a few pages of type, a shade over 1,500 words. As a homework submission to our group, it worked beautifully… so beautifully I began to consider its possibilities. If I submitted it with success to an anthology it would rub shoulders with some...