What is the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge?
Come up with a roster of fifty-two stories (you can use any source) and assign each one to a playing card in a standard deck of cards. It can be fun to use different suits for different types of stories, but that is optional. Each “week,” you draw a card at random from your deck and that is the story you will read.
Deal Me In was created by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis. I’ve been participating since 2014 (I think) and it’s become a bit of a tradition for me. It’s also one of the few reading challenges I always finish, even if I haven’t been very diligent at blogging about the stories. Deal Me In combines many things I enjoy: making lists, cards, and reading short stories. I briefly considered not doing Deal Me In, but I won the above pack of David Copperfield History of Magic cards. That’s like the laws of statistics telling me I have to do it!
For hearts, I picked Eugie Award nominees and winners that I hadn’t read yet. For clubs, Nebula award nominees and winners. Diamonds are short stories published by Tor.com in 2021, and spades are “Into the Night” best horror fiction recommendations from Nightfire (Tor’s horror imprint). Deuces are wild!
Simple Tricks & Nonsense 