Tag: flash fiction

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This is my second reading for the Best Microfiction 2023 virtual launch. I love seeing the different approaches all the writers take to presenting their stories. I like to hear how a writer presents a story, how they placed the emphasis in a sentence or how they read a bit of dialogue. It can make me consider a story a whole new way.

This reading is from a bluff favored by rappelers in Giant City State Park. It’s a great place for a micro-hike, as it only takes a few minutes to get to the top of the bluff. Also, the meadow at the bottom really shows off the height of the bluff nicely. It’s not mountains, but it sure is beautiful.

The story first appeared in 805 Lit + Art. I’m so grateful for it’s first home, and also that they nominated the story for Best Microfiction—and of course that the Best Microfiction editors chose it!

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Happy Best Microfiction 2023 Virtual Book Launch Day! Find the event on Facebook. It’s going on all day and will be archived. Here’s one of mine!

Everything Depends on the Potato – Ghost Parachute

This story started in one of my writing groups, and used a newspaper story as inspiration. I read at Giant City State Park, which is part of the Shawnee National Forest. This is the Post Oak Trail, which is the most accessible trail in the park. That wooden railing behind me is built over a bluff. There are four playgrounds in Giant City. I used to bring my son there when he was little.

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When the Moon Hits Your Eye first appeared in Parhelion Literary Review’s Halloween issue as one of three of my stories included in that issue.

The story was inspired by a photo of Lon Chaney Jr. in costume for The Wolfman, sitting patiently while a stylist fixed his hair.

The reading is at Walker’s Bluff, a winery in the area. I walked across the grounds to an outdoor area that is rarely used now that they’ve moved into the second and pending third phase of development. It’s a beautiful area near a manmade lake, dotted with clusters of live edge tables and chairs that put me in mind of sitting amidst mushrooms. There’s a small building there that housed the wine bar that I think may be empty now.

I used to live near the area, on Hill Road, at Broken Branch, when my son was small. I had Merlin then, and a Curly Peruvian Paso for Dylan named Crocodile. Odin the German Shepherd rounded out our household, along with the occasional volunteer cat. The house was nothing to speak of, but we had 15 fenced acres surrounding it. I could hear the horses grazing outside my bedroom window at night. We were brokity-broke-broke, but those were good times.

A teenaged girl used to ride her Haflinger horse past the house. If I was home and available, I or Dylan and I would ride with her. I showed her the trails along the Big Muddy River and the field roads I had permission to ride, and she showed me a beautiful field with rolling hills. One day she said to me: “This is the last time we’ll be able to ride here. My aunt is going to turn this into a winery.”

We have an official wine region here, the Shawnee Hills AVA. So I knew it was possible. But I had no idea the scope or the vision! Walker’s Bluff is now a winery with a tasting room and outdoor patio area. And a wine cave. And an upscale restaurant. And, coming soon, a casino-resort. My favorite area, though, is still that first outdoor area.

Other B-roll in the reading is from a trip a year ago to Albuquerque, New Mexico to spend Christmas with my stepson, stationed at a nearby U.S. Air Force base. We took a day trip to Santa Fe, where we strolled around the art district and checked out the Meow Wolf exhibit (which, by the way, I highly recommend).

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I took the Blue Ridge Parkway from Blowing Rock to almost Asheville on my way home from my first AuthorCon / Scares That Care event. I stopped as often as I could to take in the view, or to hike a short ways, half a mile or so, on some of the trails. I stopped here at the Chenoa View to do a reading of my story Harbinger, which appears in Root, Branch, Tree: 2020 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology.

After I finished reading, it occurred to me I might have read that one at a boat ramp, since a boat ramp is not only part of the setting, but also where I got the idea for the story.

Once upon a time, I lived in a duplex not quite a mile from Cedar Lake in Southern Illinois. Before I had a kayak, I’d walk my dog down to the lake, or sometimes, drive there instead of going straight home after work. It was a chaotic time in my life (when isn’t it though) and sometimes I needed a minute to sit by the water before going home. The idea for this particular story started when I drove to the boat ramp during a nighttime thunderstorm. I sat there in my truck, watching the lightning flash over the lake and listening to the dark-moving clouds rumble, and thought about what it’s like to lose someone you’ve already lost.

In this story, I mean for the end to be ambiguous. Why does GraceAnn make her deal, and with whom? Does she want her sister to go soon so she won’t suffer? Or is GraceAnn bitter? Does she really wish it was her instead?

I hope you enjoy the story!  

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I was asked to write a craft essay for the forthcoming edition of Best Microfiction — a first for me, and a huge honor. It got me thinking about how I started writing flash fiction, and why I love the genre so much.

To give a simple answer: Meg Pokrass got me started writing flash fiction. Meg, and the community she created.

If you haven’t already discovered Meg Pokrass, remedy that immediately. Any of her books will do, they will all leave you gasping for breath. I don’t know anyone who writes quite like Meg. She’ll break your heart and you’ll laugh while it’s happening. No one gets the beginning of how things end the way Meg does. She can tell a story set in the past, or one set right now, and it all feels like something you’ve remembered, or something you’ve only just now understood though it was there all the time. Every single thing in a Meg Pokrass story means something, but her stories are never weighed down, they are never pompous.

I found Meg on Facebook when social media was still fairly new. I don’t remember exactly how. Meg posted prompt words nearly every day. And a large community of writers used them and posted their drafts there. So I started to do it, too.

Meg’s instructions were to use all the words — usually 8-10 of them — in a story written in about 20 minutes of continuous writing. In other words, a timed freewrite.

I confess at first I thought these freewrites were merely writing exercises, something you did on your way to whatever it was you were really going to do. But then I started hearing this term “flash fiction.” And I noticed how the other stories from the prompts were put together, how they worked as full stories and packed an outsized punch.

Meg’s first book, Damn Sure Right, was still new. I bought it — and the sun shone through the clouds, and birds sang, and rainbows arced, and brooks babbled merrily. I got it all at once, what flash fiction was about, what it could do, why it is so powerful. An epiphany, if you will…

It wasn’t just reading Meg’s work, though. It was reading everyone else’s stories on the page, too, watching how they used language, developed characters, moved the narrative — all in less than 1,000 words. What’s more, these accomplished and well-published writers offered kind feedback on each other’s stories — and on mine too!

From the comments made on my stories — or not made — I began to understand where I’d been successful and where I still needed to work. Meg herself was always encouraging. Others in the community — Charles Rammelkamp, the late and much-missed David James, James Claffey, Morgana McLeod, Francine Witte, Frances Leibowitz, Michael Dwayne Smith, Sherrie Flick, Rosemary Tantra Bensko, so many others — were kind to newbie me. Sometimes they saw a gold nugget in a story I thought was a throw-away. Occasionally, someone would suggest an edit, and as I tried out the suggestions, I began to understand how to craft my work.

One of my favorite things in reading the other stories was seeing how everyone else used the prompt words. Sometimes several writers would use several of the words the same way, sometimes even in the same word order. Other times, someone would bend a word in a way I didn’t know it could be bent! Meg in particular is a master of this, with a James Joyce-level of attention to details and bits of truth that are simple on the surface, but weighty as an iceberg with lurking (and often devastating) meaning.

I’ve kept most of my freewrites from then, dating back all the way to 2012. Some of them are embarrassing! I’d write with mad passion, deeply personal but without much relevance for anyone else — like writing a diary entry — and call it a story. That kind of confessional writing was good for me, cringy though it is for me now. It was instrumental in teaching me to shut down that inner critic, to write now and edit later and to get out of my own way.

From that freewrite community, I learned to play with language and to allow even delicate words to do some heavy-lifting. I learned to write myself out of a hole, to take sharp turns when necessary, and to finish the story, not just let it trail off into mist. That it’s okay to throw away whole paragraphs, to begin the story at the end, to admit that this one just isn’t going to work. To write every day or at least regularly — and to expect some days to deliver sluggish and uninspired work. And that it’s important to share your work, and to get feedback on it, to have a writing community.

I’ve since taken plenty of flash fiction workshops: with Meg, Kathy Fish, Nancy Stohlman, Lorette Luzajic, others. I’ve learned something profound in every one, whether it’s a new approach to pulling a story out of the air, or an editing methodology for an unruly story that maybe has something to offer.

I’ll always write flash. I love the immediacy, the spontaneity, the unpredictability, the challenge. I’m writing some longer works now, including proper short stories. I’ve got a novella-in-flash going, a hybrid collection, and a horror novel. Flash is where I found my voice, though, and it’s the well-spring that will always refresh.

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Used to be, I couldn’t sleep with my back to a room. I had to have my bed shoved up against the wall, and my back had to be to that wall—touching it, even. I’m a little easier about that now. I’ll roll over in the night without waking up in full freak-out mode.

But I still must have a blanket on, no matter how hot it is. Over my ankles, at least. My knees. Because monsters. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about—at least some of you have a similar fear.

I don’t know the rules monsters follow. And I don’t know why some people aren’t now or never were afraid of breaking monster rules. Reckless. Because monsters remember. They might not get you right away, the moment you transgress. They might wait years. The breaking of the rules gives then an in—even if you only slipped up just the one time.

Just the One Time by Epiphany Ferrell

I read this story on a boulder in the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River. Some of the footage is from trails either in the Smokies or Blue Ridge Mountains. Just the One Time first appeared in Ghost Parachute.

I apologize for the snap, crackle and pop. I couldn’t bear not to use this reading even though there are some sound issues. Working on it!

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What I’m reading and where I’m reading it. And what I’m drinking for part of the time I’m reading it.

So, this first one is a book about a woman driving alone in the mountains on her way to a horror convention, and encountering the Mothman or something like it and assorted other baddies along the way. For reasons I’ll explain in mid-April, that one skeered me. Below by Laurel Hightower is genuinely scary but it’s also empowering.

I enjoyed that book at Ebb & Flow Fermentations in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Ebb & Flow has got just the best vibe. Inside it’s eclectic funky, and outside it’s herb garden magic. It’s February, so we’re inside. They have a series of beers named after goddesses and made by their women brewers. This one is Arduinna, which they describe as a dark saison ale with chocolate malt and roasted hickory bark. It was a perfect match.

Into the Forest and All the Way Through by Cynthia Pelayo is a collection of poems based on real life / true crime stories of murdered and missing American women and girls. It is heartbreaking. It’s one thing to read or write fiction that has murders — even if you are drawing from your own experience, you know the story itself is fiction. It’s another to write true crime — most of that is written in a clinical, research-forward way. Cina Pelayo goes into the heart and all the way through to your soul. I’ve not read anything quite like it.

So after all that seriousness, it seems almost stupid to talk about reading it in a bar during Valentine’s week. Johnson Bar in Paducah, Kentucky was all done up for the holiday, in reds and blacks and pinks and hearts and arrows and naughtiness and snarkiness and a nod to the heartbroken. The red lighting made the pictures kinda cool. That’s a Paloma I’m drinking — they do complex cocktails very well, but that night I was more traditional.

I am honored to call Meg Pokrass my friend. She has been my flash fiction mentor, a source of encouragement and inspiration, and a supporter when I needed a hug followed by a kick in the ass (all virtual). She lives now in Inverness, Scotland, the gateway to Loch Ness, and if Nessie is going to show herself to anyone, it’ll be Meg. They are two of a kind — mysterious, shy, beautiful and playful. Kissing the Monster Hunter is a series of flash fiction stories about a monster hunter. And love.

I was at Hill Prairie Winery upstate in Oakford, Illinois. They have historic pictures of horses on the wall — Morgans, a Percheron stallion, mules, work horses, all of them previously associated with the place in days of yore — so you know I loved it. The wine in this picture is Fireside Cran-Apple Spice, which tastes like a mulled wine.

Cheers!

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A foggy early January day and mysterous atmosphere led me to drive around looking for cool places to hang out. It’s not hard where I live. I found a spot near the Panther Den Wilderness area not far from a really cool attraction, the Shawnee Bluffs Canopy Tour, a zipline and suspension bridge site.

This story, Renaissance, is a re-write from an older, much longer story I wrote several years ago and shelved. I knew I wanted to do something with it. What needed to happen, as it turns out, was for me to whittle down the word count to just less than half of the original — and then to do that again.

The story appears in Legerdemain: National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2021, edited by Santino Prinzi and Nod Ghosh. It’s really an honor to be included in the anthology.