The other day, Moonrat replied to a question about the acceptability of collections of “linked” short stories: stories united by a common theme, cast of characters, whatever. Along the way, she wondered what the state of short fiction in general might be, in these days when writers seem so focused on books.*

(The comments surprised her, and me too, by implying there are a lot of short-story readers out there. On the other hand, the readers tend to be writers of short stories, too — which implies a certain… goal orientation, let’s say.)

One gauge of continued interest in short stories (and poetry, and “creative non-fiction” as they call essays these days) is the health of the literary-fiction markets. Eileen, a/k/a Speak Coffee to Me, points us to a post at the Third Coast** blog — a “linkbucket” of online resources:

There’s much more to revolution and innovation in literature than the Kindle. To find some, all you have to do is open your browser.

I knew of the DuoTrope directory of magazines (both print and online); it’s been linked to for months over at the right, in the the “Writer’s Biz Resources” category. (I didn’t know, though, about its submission-tracking feature.) And including general links to Twitter and Facebook — not to specific resources there, just to the services’ home pages — seems, er, a little… obvious?

But whether you’re a writer or reader of literary fiction, you could build a pretty respectable list of browser bookmarks from nosing around the links the post provides: consider it a “Start Here” post on the subject.

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* Hey, you can be a writer of short stories, but we all want to be authors — which means books, right?

** If you’re imagining the “Third Coast” to be along the Gulf of Mexico, er, not. Try the Great Lakes.