New Year, New Design, New Focus

For 2008, I’ve decided to shift the focus of BookFox onto the short story. This means I’ll be focusing on short story collections and places short stories appear – magazines, literary journals, webzines. It doesn’t mean that BookFox will exclusively cover short stories (I don’t think I could limit my interests that much), but it does mean I’ll be making a concerted effort to steer the site towards a strong short story bent.

I’m doing this for a number of reasons. One is that I feel there are a growing number of literary blogs that are generalized, trying to do a great deal over a very large territory, and I feel many of those blogs cover that territory better than I can. Also, while the blogosphere has blogs specializing in the publishing industry, literary journals, all types of genre fiction, independent bookstores, and international/translated fiction, I can’t find a good blog focused on the short story. So I’m going to try to wiggle into that niche.

I also think that this niche fits me. I spend at least half of my reading energy not on nonfiction or novels, but on short stories in collections and journals. Add in the amount of time that I spend writing short stories (I am working on finishing a collection) and my love for the form, and it seems a no-brainer that BookFox should change to focus on the 75-100 short story collections published yearly.

The first step towards this shift is already apparent: the banner redesign. Hope you like it, because my Photoshop skills might be too feeble to try for a second pass. The second step is on the right column: a section listing some nice links to short story sites. Those are the first of some changes, with more to come as the ideas strike me (or as you, my loyal readers, offer suggestions).

Thanks to everyone for reading BookFox in 2007, and I’m eagerly anticipating blogging in 2008 about the welter of short stories that will soon be published.