[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-129573-en":3,"doc-seo-129573-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":11,"is_downloadable":11,"audit_status":11,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},129573,687207024478,"Liam","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd",1,"Story & Novel","Rory’s Not That Guy and Other Tales from Middle America - Preface: Short Stories Like Short Films","Rory’s Not That Guy and Other Tales from Middle America gathers William E. Burleson’s short stories shaped by a satirical, imaginative vision of contemporary life. The preface frames the craft of short fiction as distinct from the marathon of novel writing, comparing short stories to short films and highlighting the discipline of selecting one central idea. Through conference anecdote and analogy, the text argues that short stories have their own masters and structural demands, focusing on precision, urgency, and character detail.","Praise for Rory’s Not That Guy and Other Tales from Middle America  \nRory’s Not That Guy and Other Tales from Middle America springs from a Protean imagination (supported by an impressively various craft repertoire) . William Burleson sometimes sounds like a Damon Runyon for the 21st century, but is sometimes a lot more experimental than that. The satirical edge always lurking somewhere pulls together these stories’ picture of life in our time.  \n—Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls’ Rising and a National Book Award finalist  \n❦  \nFrom an amuse-bouche to a three-course meal, Burleson’s stories are tasty and satisfying and proof positive the inner worlds of quiet souls, folks one might be tempted to dismiss, explode in riotous, hotdish, hot mess. Often painfully hilarious, these stories are futuristic, contemporary, and nostalgic all at once. Rich in detail, rife with compelling characters, Burleson’s collection is a joyful triumph.  \n—Karen Lee Boren, author of Secret Waltz, Mother Tongue, Girls in Peril, and Ways Home  \n❦  \nWilliam E Burleson’s Rory’s Not That Guy taps into a vein of troperidden Americana within all of us, not just those of us living in middle America, but the deft skill he possesses and flexes is that he is able to do this without irony, prejudice, or a reliance on stereotype. As he thoughtfully holds the mirror up to the flaws that gnaw at the American spirit, he doesn’t necessarily offer solutions, but he does offer humor, humility, and a surefire helluva ride.  \n—Joanna Acevedo, author of the short story collections Small Cruelties and Unsaid Things  \nRory’s Not That Guy and Other Tales from Middle America  \nSHORT STORIES BY  \nWILLIAM E BURLESON  \nA Blackwater Press book  \nFirst published in the United States of America by  \nBlackwater Press, LLC  \nCopyright © William E Burleson, 2026  \nAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.  \nThis publication may not be used to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies or machine learning language models without a separate license from the author or publisher.  \nLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2025949106  \nISBN: 978-1-963614-30-5  \nCover design by: Fabiola Casieri  \nBlackwater Press  \n120 Capitol Street  \nCharleston, WV 25301  \nUnited States  \n[blackwaterpress.com](blackwaterpress.com)  \nFor Sam Shepard  \nPREFACE  \nFor me, short stories are like short films. Maybe once a year I’ll go see the Oscar-nominated short films at my neighborhood theater and afterwards wonder why I don’t see these nice little movies more often. Short films are awesome. Like eating tapas. Okay, I actually don’t like tapas, but I do like the analogy, and if I did like tapas, it would be like that. Tasty little delights consumed plate after plate.  \nMaybe one reason I like short stories is because I love writing them. I love writing novels too, but those are a marathon. Short stories are a sprint. For some of my short stories, I had a reasonable first draft to work with in one day. With novels, you run until your feet bleed and your toenails fall off, have uncontrollable sobbing fits around mile twenty, throw up around mile ten, and poop yourself around mile fifteen. Meanwhile, people are cheering you along—you can do it! It’s all you!—as you think, shut the fuck up! I don’t see you out here, waistband of your shorts causing your bellybutton to bleed!  \nI’ve never actually run a marathon, but that’s what I imagine it to be like. Sure, describes writing a novel, though, except for the pooping, and rather than people standing on the sidelines cheering, they are saying,“Oh, that’ll never work,”“What’s wrong with you?” and “You know, Herman, whales aren’t white.”  \nAnyway, short stories.  \nI go to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference every year. ","cbCaifCCvT50zvHg","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifCCvT50zvHg","pdf",1787160,2,200,"English","en",105,"# Preface\n## Short stories as short films\n## Short story vs. novel: canoe analogy\n## Why short stories aren’t training wheels","[{\"question\":\"How does the preface describe the relationship between short stories and short films?\",\"answer\":\"It compares short stories to short films—tasty, self-contained delights—and suggests they deserve to be seen more often, like Oscar-nominated shorts.\"},{\"question\":\"What key distinction does the preface make between a short story and a novel?\",\"answer\":\"It uses the analogy that a short story is a canoe while a novel is not an enormous canoe, emphasizing that novels allow multiple subplots and time, whereas short stories focus on one nugget of an idea.\"},{\"question\":\"Does the preface suggest short stories are only a stepping-stone to novels?\",\"answer\":\"No. While they can serve that purpose sometimes, the preface argues that the form has its own masters and established authority.\"}]","Rory’s Not That Guy and Other Tales from Middle America - 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