Advice for Flash Fiction Publishing

Writers striving to publish their flash fictions may find this article useful: "10 Amateur Mistakes to Avoid When Submitting Flash Fiction to Literary Magazines."

"The Find"

Today my flash fiction, "The Find," appears at Ink, Sweat & Tears. I expect other poets will identify with the general situation....

A great list of flash fiction outlets

Zebulon Huset at The Review Review has published a wonderfully comprehensive list of flash fiction outlets here. Take a look!

An editor's tips on publishing flash fiction

Andrew Winch, senior editor for Splickety Publishing Group, gives useful tips or secrets, as he calls them, here on The Review Review.

Sudden Prose Reprints: "The Carousel" by Deborah G. Sloan

The Carousel

‘That is not her child,’ my mother says and nods towards a woman walking up the beach holding a young girl’s hand.  I watch the pair walk towards the carousel.  The attendant bends to take coins from the child then lifts her onto her horse.  The woman hitches her skirt and neatly slides on behind the child.  As the carousel starts to turn, the woman leans forward and whispers something to the child. Laughing, they both grasp imaginary reins and, as they gallop towards the pier, I turn to my mother and begin the question I have never dared ask.

Deborah G. Sloan

"The Carousel" first appeared in Mslexia. 

An expat Scot living and working in Brighton, Deborah is a counsellor and creative writing facilitator, running creative writing workshops for children and adults in a range of settings including Nymans Gardens, schools and an addiction rehabilitation centre.  Recently she was awarded second place for a war poem in the SaveAs Writers ‘Bigger Picture’ international poetry competition and won Mslexia’s October 2014 Flash Fiction prize.  You can lern more about Deborah at www.deborahsloancounselling.com or on Facebook at Createplaywrite.

 

Sudden Prose Student Success!

The 2013-14 Sudden Prose module has had its first publication success! Congratulations go to Collette Lord, whose short-short story from the module, "The New Dog," will appear on the National Flash Fiction Day's FlashFlood website, http://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.co.uk/, between one and two a.m. on National Flash Fiction Day (the 21st).

Sudden Prose Reprints: J.R. Fenn's "After the Natatorium"

After the Natatorium

The first time they saw the natatorium they changed into their bathing costumes, pulled their rubber caps over their heads, and rushed into the water without a thought for the ice crystals that floated, cold and perfect, on the surface. As they somersaulted, chicken-fought, and cannonballed from the edges, an Indiana marching band played the young upstart Sousa’s Liberty Bell, conducted by a gesticulating barber from Mishawaka. The pool washed their skin clean of Chicago grime—soot from the chimneys, brick dust from fingernails, mortar packed and matted in their hair—and they crawled out of the natatorium as pink and fat as they had from the baptismal font, before they could rightly remember their own names.

At night the natatorium’s locked doors and windows invited the jimmied entrance of gin-breathers and wounded boys who immersed themselves in the waters, where they bled through their bandages in a hush, leaving the pool’s liquid a clear lapping blue and their wounds salted, closed, and covered over with quick growths of scar tissue that shone whiter against the white bottom of the great basin—a basin so gigantic that none of the night gangs could have imagined it could hold them all together at once as they bobbed and spumed and sighed in the dark, the occasional laugh that bubbled up from their throats swallowed by the cavernous heights above.

As the water warmed over the course of the summer, swimmers arrived from all corners of the city: babies with cauls that clung wet in their mothers’ arms, dancers whose jewels spread from their hips in drifts of color, liberated minnows that darted in bright curtains though the depths, a dromedary with levers inside to propel its dives toward the bottom-most deeps where it dwindled smaller than the terriers that paddled belly down in the light-cracked shallows.

Soon the demand for water outpaced the supply from the spring fed aqueducts sourced in a village northwest of the city. The natatorium dried up into a hollow field of concrete that first housed an electrical exhibit, then a market, and then—before it finally fell into disrepair—a variety show. Hawkers lingered by the entrance to advertise big mamas, one-eyed dogs and penguin men, flippers downed in black and white fuzz. The waterless pool filled with a honeycomb of curtained compartments where hundreds of people disappeared, eyes open in wonder, in hopes that others might chart their futures.

JR Fenn's writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, PANK, Flash, and more. 'After the Natatorium' is reprinted from Versal. She teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Oblong III

Oblong Magazine's third issue is out, and I'm delighted to have a story, "Insurance," therein. A mere £3 will also bring you a nicely printed magazine of flash fictions by Alan Beard, Ric Carter, Margaret Eaton, Rhoda Greaves, Chad Greene, B. J. Jones, Nicole Matos, J. J. Steinfeld and Jon Steinhagen, as well as my own contribution. Many thanks to editor Jo Beckett King.

Fellow Sudden Prose writers may be interested to know that Oblong has just reopened for flash fiction submissions for its website, as they take a short hiatus from print issues.

New magazine, The Irish Literary Review, seeking flash fiction

The Irish Literary Review is seeking flash fiction submissions of 300 to 1000 words. You can learn more here.

New online magazine seeking flash fiction

Deep South, a new online journal from the University of New Zealand at Otago, seeks submissions of creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry and flash fiction up to 500 words. Find out more details on their website.

FlashFlood and "Dreams He Can't Remember"

On Friday, 19 April, the people behind National Flash Fiction Day run FlashFlood, where flash fictions are posted online regularly throughout the day. My own story, "Dreams He Can't Remember," went up at 6 a.m. (no, I didn't get up early to check) and can be read here. Comments most welcome!

Two Flash Fiction Competitions

The organization Chalk the Sun is holding a 200-word flash fiction competition, on the theme of discovery, in conjunction with the Wandsworth Arts Festival. Full details are available here.

The Chorlton Arts Festival is holding its annual Flashtag competition, with a 400-word limit. You can read more about it here. Happily, it looks like there isn't an entry fee for this one.

Flash in the Pen Microfiction Competition

To celebrate its hundredth issue, New Welsh Review is holding a microfiction competition for stories of maximum 100 words (including the words in the title), and there is no entry fee. Cynan Jones will judge. Full details are available here.

Sudden Prose Reprints: "New Neighbours" by Ian Seed

New Neighbours

 

Three men moved into the flat on the other side of the landing. They seemed a friendly bunch and would always greet me with smiles and loud helloes when we squeezed by one another on the narrow staircase. One of the three men was divorced and had a small daughter who would come to visit him. At first it seemed that the father and daughter had a special relationship. I could hear her calling ‘Daddy’ excitedly and his voice responding in warm, yet measured tones. I would watch through the window as she ran round the small lawn at the back and he stood there smiling proudly in his rolled-up shirtsleeves. But over the weeks I noticed his voice becoming harsher and more impatient. When he wanted her to come back into the house, he would take her hand and tug it roughly. I began to wonder if he was abusing her. It was as if he could sense my suspicions, for he would glare at me and say nothing whenever our paths crossed. Now the three men would shove by me on the stairs. They were always laughing at some joke that only they understood, but which I was sure was obscene.

Ian Seed

 

Ian Seed is editor of www.shadowtrain.com. Publications include Sleeping with the Ice Cream Vendor (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2012), Threadbare Fables (where "New Neighbours" first appeared; Like This Press, 2012), Shifting Registers (Shearsman, 2011), and a translation from the Italian of Ivano Fermini, the straw which comes apart (Oystercatcher Press, 2010). He is currently working on a full-length collection of prose poems.

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Like Owls" by Tania Hershman

"Like Owls"

Someone died. That was the whisper down the line. The line, that stretched, that snaked, that wound. Someone died, they hissed, pass it on. And we did, we bent towards our neighbour, our hot breath in their ear. Who, who, who? Like owls, the sounds came back. Who died, who died, who died? But nothing was returned, and no-one could see, no-one could see the front, although every day we shuffled some, we moved one foot and maybe the other. We hoped, we hoped and hoped, we clutched our numbers, shuffling.

Inside our heads we wondered if we were it, the dead, the expired. Perhaps we had all passed on but why the shuffling then? If we were dead, we thought, we'd rest. If we were dead we'd lie around all day, in sunshine if it still existed. Lucky dead, we thought, lucky not to have to queue, to eat, or breathe, or sigh or sweat, or love or curse. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

The next day and the next, we stood, we inched, we stood. And then: a runner. A runner streaking, from behind straight up, towards the head, the start, the finish! Go go go go, we cried, clutching our numbers, our shuffling feet thrilled to the chase, thrilled to the bravery. Go go go go go! The runner vanished, far far ahead, and we strained to hear, to hear some cheers, some acts, some violence, some thing. But no, the runner's run was done. Bones broken, came the whisper, hissed from one ear to the next. Truncheons, batons, zappers, chains and stern commands. The runner won't be running now, or ever, and we giggled, laughed and cackled, foolish runner, stupid stupid stupid, no not brave, not brave. Queue we must and queue we did, no breaking free, no gaining ground.

Someone died. That was the whisper down the line. Who who who? Like owls, the sound came back. 

Tania Hershman is the author of two story collections: My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions (Tangent Books, 2012), a collection of 56 very short fictions, and The White Road and Other Stories (Salt, 2008; commended, 2009 Orange Award for New Writers). Tania's short stories and poetry are published or forthcoming in, among others, Five Dials, Stinging Fly, Tears in the Fence, PANK magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, the London Magazine, and New Scientist, and on BBC Radio. She is writer-in-residence in Bristol University's Science Faculty and editor of The Short Review. 

Sudden Prose Reprints: "A Loyal Friend" by Tania Hershman

"A Loyal Friend"

Most people considered Jacobsen a loyal friend and so they invested everything, every cent they had. When Jacobsen failed to appear at the time they had agreed, no-one worried. Jacobsen's a friend, they said to each other. He is probably delayed, they said cheerfully, and helped themselves to nuts.

Several hours later, when attempts to contact Jacobsen had failed, they started talking in a different way. This is the point where you smile, they said to one another, and you say, We should have known. This is the point where you call the police.

Jacobsen was never found. It was never even determined where Jacobsen had come from, so to work out where he went was a lost cause. For a long time, his friends, the ones who had considered themselves confidantes and intimates, would meet and talk about him. One by one they began to confess their ignorance. What was his first name? they whispered to each other. What was he really called?

Tania Hershman is the author of two story collections: My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions (Tangent Books, 2012), a collection of 56 very short fictions, and The White Road and Other Stories (Salt, 2008; commended, 2009 Orange Award for New Writers). Tania's short stories and poetry are published or forthcoming in, among others, Five Dials, Stinging Fly, Tears in the Fence, PANK magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, the London Magazine, and New Scientist, and on BBC Radio. She is writer-in-residence in Bristol University's Science Faculty and editor of The Short Review.

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Five Hundred Pound" by Tony Williams

"Five Hundred Pound" by Tony Williams

My growing up began in a pedalo at Carsington Water, when Granddad said to me, ‘I’ve left you some money in me will. Just so you know. I won’t be going for a long time yet, but when I do, there’s something for you. Five hundred pound.’

  We churned round among the swans without speaking. Drifting in near the bank we went under an overhanging tree, and I felt tiny insects or flecks of sap fall on my head and shoulders. I couldn’t speak; my head was full of five hundred pound.

Granddad was sitting there, his leg warm next to mine, the smell of his hair and coat. But I was thinking: Playstation. Mountain bike. Year’s supply of Haribo.

All through dinner all these ideas were tumbling through my mind. ‘You’re quiet,’ said Granny. It was sort of exciting but sort of painful too – how would I know what to buy? What if I chose the wrong thing?

He hadn’t known he was about to die. It was just chance that on the Monday I got back from school, mucky and cross after Games, and Dad was there, home early, in charge, and Mum was crying and hugging me. They sat me down and told me, and the first thing that came into my head was, ‘Digital camera. Playstation. Portable DVD.’ The second thing was, ‘Granddad’s dead,’ but the damage was done.

On the day I was wearing this dark suit. The collar chafed my neck, and I was glad. I wanted to cry. I looked out of the window of the black car at the rain. My fingers were drumming in my pocket, though. It felt like I had a secret.

At the crematorium I sang along although I didn’t know half the words. I tried to listen to what everyone said about Granddad, but all the time I was thinking how sad I had to be, and not thinking about the other thing. Then I found out I was crying, and it was OK.

Everyone went outside and stood about. Boring. Some of the men were smiling, and then some of the women too. They were talking about drinking. I knew there were tables of sandwiches and sausage rolls waiting at Granny and Grandad’s, and I really wanted to eat a plateful, but I didn’t think it was right. But Dad started rounding everybody up, and I went anyway, sitting in the car next to Mum, her cuddling me too tight.

It was the summer before the money came through. I’d twigged that Mum would make me save it, but she said we could go into Nottingham and spend some of it on something I wanted. We went and stood under the stone lions, and then to Dixons. I got an mp3 player. Then we had burgers at this posh ‘joint’, as Mum called it. They were massive, these burgers. I didn’t like the gherkins. When we were waiting for pudding I got the mp3 player out and had a go on the buttons, tried it out, looked at the instructions. It was OK, but I knew I’d failed.

"Five Hundred Pound" appears in Tony Williams' just-released collection of short stories, All the Bananas I've Never Eaten: Tales of Love and Loneliness (Salt). His stories have appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Horizon Review, Fuselit and Under the Radar. His most recent poetry publication, All the Rooms of Uncle's Head (Nine Arches), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice. He lives in Northumberland and teaches at Northumbria University.

"Fiction in a Flash"

A new article on flash fiction and brevity, written by Robert McCrum, appears in today's Guardian.

First Years' Fifty-Word Flashes

In my taster lecture last week for students taking the first-year creative writing core module, I talked about what makes a piece of writing a story, showed them some fifty-word stories, and then asked them to write their own. I promised to post the best story I received, and out of over fifty entries, I've chosen one story and my partner has chosen another as the winners. 

Here's my selection, untitled, written by Hannah Crouch:

She carefully removed the bag from the box, shifted aside the dirt and measured the hole.
     She wasn't quite sure. Maybe she should have discussed this with her husband. But he didn't know anything about the other plants. He would be annoyed. 
     The baby was so small. Tree on top.


I can't say I understand everything that's going on in this story, but I understand enough, and what isn't entirely clear intrigues me. 

Here's the special judge's selection: 

"One Dog and His Duck" by Ben Halford

The dog came home one day with a duck in his mouth--a dead duck, but still a duck. I wondered how he had caught it so quick--the lake was ten miles up the road. I asked the dog walker, "Where'd he get that?"
     "From the butcher's," he replied.


Honorable mentions, in no particular order, go to Laura Kite, Scott Varnham, Duncan Drury, Bethan Reynolds, Trudy Williams, and Lucy Bushell.

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Anya's Complaint" by Tony Williams

"Anya's Complaint"

Anya’s beauty was in her hair. She had it tied it up most of the time, sitting in The Plum Pie drinking a gin and bitter lemon, reading her copy of English Folk Tales with a faraway look. But everyone knew that when she let it down, for instance for the river-swimming at the summer festival, or at her father’s funeral, it reached down past her knees, almost to her feet. In that brown bough of frame her pale face, freckled and elfin, could not help but upset the young men of the village. She was a living rebuke, a medieval picture of innocence. In the water, it spread out in a vast circle so that they couldn’t approach her. It was like the stinging fronds of an anemone.

Geoff arrived and they fell in love. He had a job delivering veg boxes for the organic grocer’s. At first he smoked roll-ups, but he soon gave that up after he got together with Anya. His hair was the same colour as hers, but wilder. It lay in tufts over his shoulders. He had a bushy beard, and such a quiet voice that it was almost impossible to talk to him at all. But it was the right volume for whispering in Anya’s tiny white ears.

She took to wearing her hair down more often, and Geoff grew his hair too, and they walked in the fields outside the village, hand in hand. Anya’s hair fell down around her like a priestess’s robes.

One afternoon they went to a secluded spot amongst the beech trees. If anyone had been watching from the hedgerow he would have seen them taking off their clothes and walking, naked, on the crisp remains of last year’s leaves. He would have heard Anya say that her breasts were cold. She used that word – breasts – and the watcher would have reflected that that’s how it was when your girlfriend was ethereal. Perhaps he would have thought that they would put their clothes back on, but instead Geoff reached out his arms and drew her towards him.

He sat cross-legged in the clearing and sat Anya down facing him, then drew her closer so that their faces and bodies became invisible inside a tent of hair. Anya’s reached down past her buttocks and lay in pools on the grass and sticks, and she wrapped it round Geoff and over his shoulders, which were fairly well concealed already. (It had turned out, to nobody’s surprise, that he had the most tremendously hairy back.) They sat like for a long time. For a while Geoff talked about the seasons on a theme suggested to him by Anya’s complaint: natural materials he might use to warm her body or which were suggested by it; locations for a future paradise; and activities therein. Then Anya told him the most secret fears of her childhood, and described in detail the moments when, in her intimacy with Geoff, one by one, each of these fears had been finally laid to rest. Then they sang together for a while, in low voices which were comfortable in their slight tunelessness.

The watchers outside the hair-tent could hear only a low murmur, and none of what was said between Anya and Geoff. They felt ashamed, that they had gone there to see what was not meant to be seen.

In the beer garden later that summer, Briggsy set fire to them for a laugh. It wasn’t funny. Geoff managed to slosh his cider over his face and that saved him from the worst of it – it had to be shaved off later, but he wasn’t burned. But all of Anya’s fabled hair was gone in a second. She had to go off to the county hospital. That wasn’t the worst of it – the worst of it was seeing her suddenly bald head, a charred almond, the fear and humiliation and madness in those eyes. It was sickening to see her hauled through the centuries like that. They had to take off her blouse – that was burning too. And Geoff went and tried to hold her, but she was burned so they wouldn’t let him, and all he could do was to stand round with the others, crying and cooing. That white skin, marked with red burns.

Everyone condemned what Briggsy had done, and it was right that he went to prison. But we were a bit grateful too. We see Anya in The Plum Pie and ask how she is. She wears a scarf with her velvet jacket, but she doesn’t try to hide the scars. Sometimes Geoff’s in there on his own, and he’ll have a drink and a game of pool. He’s alright, a Thin Lizzy fan. We all saw what happened, we see what’s underneath now that the hair has gone. We pummel them with friendly gestures. And now they have to share the love.

"Anya's Complaint" appears in Tony Williams' just-released collection of short stories, All the Bananas I've Never Eaten: Tales of Love and Loneliness (Salt). His stories have appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Horizon Review, Fuselit and Under the Radar. His most recent poetry publication, All the Rooms of Uncle's Head (Nine Arches), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice. He lives in Northumberland and teaches at Northumbria University.