Short stories

As many of you may know, I combine my teaching life with the writing of short stories. So far, I had only written in Spanish, my native language, of course, but some time ago I, kind of experimenting, translated some of my shortest stories. These are written using a formula known as drabble, that is, a short story of exactly one hundred words, without counting the title. The formula was born in England, when science fiction writers, faithful to the theory that says that the shorter the story, the better, established one hundred words as the ideal length for a short narrative text. In translating them, a had to keep the number of words so that the story would work in both languages equally. It was not easy, but I think I made it.
Those of you familiar with how a short story is organised might feel that one hundred is way too short for a story to be told, but it is possible if you recur to the reader´s previous knowledge and avoid telling parts of your story because the reader knows what it is about. The resource is also useful in making a story that is basically written words to become more interactive, asking the reader, in a subtle way, to fill in the blanks of a storyline with what he/she knows, or thinks he/she knows, or simply wants to invent for himself. That is how a story makes sense.
I submitted my short stories to a bilingual literary magazine in Mexico and after so many months that I had forgotten about them, until on Friday I got an email annoucing the publication of both my drabbles -in Spanish and Enlish- in their online magazine called Uruz Arts Magazine. But that was not all. The magazine has also an internet radio station and they have selected both my drabbles to be read out in a literary programme, the date is still to be announced but be sure I´ll let you know.
My hope is that these stories can be used in class because of their length and the fact that they are open to many forms of interpretation, since not all the facts are told explicitly. At the moment, I have not finished translating the more than 50 drabbles I have written, so for the time being I can only offer, to begin with and while I convince a naive publisher to put them on ink and paper, the two Uruz Arts Magazine has published (you´ll have to scroll down the page to find them). I hope you like them and, if you want, use them in class.
As always, comments are welcome.

Cesar Klauer

PD: Why is the illustration for this post a penguin? Well, you´ll have to read the stories.