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Happy New Year to you all, and welcome to the first of my Flash Fiction competitions. You can write in any genre, any format. Experimentation is fun so try to push your boundaries. The images I post might help to evoke a tone or a setting for you but they don’t have to be taken …
As wiser and more articulate people before me have noted, creativity is muscular; you need to flex it regularly to build and maintain its strength. Writers use many different techniques to exercise their imaginations, from notebooks to role-playing. There is no right or wrong way to do it, only what you find useful and what …
Some writers are cautious about handing their manuscripts over to an editor. They worry that their work will be taken away from them, misunderstood, judged unfairly or otherwise spoiled by meddling fingers. The first time can be hard, and if you don’t know what to expect, you might find yourself overwhelmed. As such, I thought …
I’ve moved out for a fortnight while the builders do their stuff, and got a little mixed up with my schedule. I should have done an extra Hobby post last week then put out my Personal blog today. Ah, well. As I was typing the following update on Facebook, it occurred to me I could …
The first and really only thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a writer. I loved books—loved the language that swept across the page, the worlds authors took me to and the revelations they unfurled. If I *had to dedicate my life to a single vocation, then this was it. I was …
Fear leers at us through the cracked lens of time; a thousand different forms threaten to reach through, clawing at our stomachs, crushing our throats, spearing our hearts with electric jolts. The present is not the problem, you understand. In the here-and-now we need only face what is and respond accordingly, but our minds… our …
‘I always stood a rapt audience when he spun these tales, and he relished the attention, I could tell. It made us so happy to be a part of the telling together.’ Instead of a single story this week, I’m giving you some snippets – flash fiction from the mind and the pen of a …
Angeline Trevena: an unstoppable author Hi folks, there’s no flash fiction contest this week, so instead let me introduce you to a good friend of mine, Angeline Trevena. She’s an author, a podcaster, and an all round good egg. If you’re at EdgeLit this weekend there’s a high chance you’ll get to meet her. Tell …
‘Kareem’s heart burned at being outplayed, at so many people being turned against him so easily. He reached the road on which the temple stood, and stopped. “Let me guess, they revived nationalist Odinism,” he said.’ With the advent of time-travel, history itself can be reshaped to fit our highest ideals. There are endless worlds …
‘Last week alone this dreaded Curse had destroyed more than two thousand souls. When Pope Clement heard this news, he shrugged and damned the whole area. Nobody touched by the plague could be spared.’ As the Black Death ravages the land, Dominic struggles to balance caring for his sick daughter and doing his duty for …
In a post-apocalyptic future, Mankind has been devastated by disease, our species reduced to a mere 2 million souls, sightless and crawling on the face of the Earth. Generations later, society has reformed into tribes and developed new modes of survival, of communication, of battle and of culture to circumvent their blindness. Vision has become …