Blinking heck. Massive thanks to all
@Prop_Pencil
for all the reading and judging and whatnot.
I’ve been trying to get this story finished for c. 2 years and probs never wld have but for the Janglers and their inspiring comments on the xth draft. 😘😘 to them too
Blinking Heck.
The results are in! Congratulations to our Charity Flash Competition winners
@drewgum
@JackieMMorris
@SarahRoyston4
And of course commiserations to those talented folks whose stories were not selected.
You can read the winners here
Literal goosebumps today. Thrilled, excited, chuffed, all the words. Big thanks to
@nationalflashfd
Write-In for this.
I’m going to hide behind the Xmas tree for a bit now.
Our Spring Competition Shortlist is LIVE.
10 stories made the list - please celebrate without giving away which is yours as
@jmgatford
is judging anonymously.
Commiserations to those whose stories don't feature - but well one on your longlisting!
Hey, guess what? I wrote the story of the month. Thanks for
@jupiterjonz
and
@MinaMaAuthor
‘s patience early on. Thanks to
@Jonzeywriter
for later review. Biggest thanks to Willesden Herald for publishing it.
It’s a tad bleak, mind.
Accepted a job offer, subject to all the checks. Yikes!!
Dog walker all lined up. Cats delighted I won’t be here to shoo them off table.
Boss is a writer. 😁
Carrie called her cockatiel Ideology because he parroted words Dad shouted at the telly. Then Ideology escaped and soon birds everywhere were squawking armchair politics. That’s when the trouble began.
#30words30days
Ideology (!)
Two blazing rows, one bunch of flowers, two late night phone calls, one last try. Two black eyes, one silver necklace, two weekends away. One last try. Two hours in casualty. One apology. Two broken ribs. One last try one last try one last try
#WHQcommunity
#microflashmonday
Three years to build, three hours to sink. Three hundred souls silt-trapped, seaweed shackled under icy sea-black crush. Three hundred siren voices bubble skywards
rescue me
rescue me
rescue me
#30Words30Days
Penguins aren’t native to Dudley but since the Zoo Riots of ‘24 we’ve found colonies thriving in domestic refrigerators, skating rinks and even, in one instance, an abandoned ice-cream van.
#30words30days
native
‘I’m not a character in one of your trashy stories,’ yelled the writer’s daughter and slammed the door behind her.
‘Not yet,’ murmured the writer and picked up her pen.
#30words30days
#character
I claim my first badge.
A story I’ve been trying to tell for three years now exists in a complete form. Don’t know if it’ll be to the judge’s taste but it pleases me 😁
Sun June 4th, the final day for our 24th Award! Everyone entering today receives the Last Minute Club badge pictured. Up to 300 word
#flashfictiions
. £1460 in prizes. Judge
@timkcraig
. Results out by end of June. Anthology.
Do share up your badges!
And if, years later, you discover a void where love once grew, what then? Seed it with anger, or hate? Better to cultivate indifference and let weeds of forgetfulness bloom.
#30words30days
#discover
My marriage is a perfect composition of grey, sage, silver. Every day now, I Pollack it Crimson - splat - Indigo - splat - Lime. ‘What are you doing?’ friends squawk. ‘He’ll leave.’
I pick the biggest paintbrush, load it Neon Pink.
Splat. Splat. Splat.
#9forNavaratri
#Shakti
My mother‘s a volcano: some days her words flow like smooth and glassy Pahoehoe lava, on others rough and jagged Aa.
Either way, the end results the same. They burn.
#30words30days
#flow
In the Oakland shopping centre there’s a solitary tree, encircled in concrete acres. Preservation, the developers call it but the oak aches for moss and birdsong and calls it death.
#30Words30Days
Today a stranger came to Hurtwood Hall, lemon sharp in the dust-sheet gloom and we, poor mothballed souls, gathered, and inhaled him greedily. Took him in. Made him our own.
#30words30days
stranger
It’s stupid, every Spring comes with a feeling adjacent to hope. As if I’ll find you around the next corner. Every year, the same dumb feeling. Every year. Every year.
#30words30days
adjacent
I gather satin shreds of temper to embellish our marriage quilt, sewing over vast squares of cotton boredom, the slender velvet of forgiveness and the last silk ribbon of love.
#30Words30Days
Eva doesn’t have her own wisdom teeth, so she works as a dental assistant & pockets other people’s. One day soon she’ll boil them up & drink the broth. All that
#wisdom
, she’ll be a Guru. Get a slot on daytime TV.
Watch out world, here comes Eva.
#9fornavaratri
My Flash is on here! So exciting to be there with names I recognise and admire. Though - ahem - my name isn’t there because I had a moment of madness and tried out a pseudonym 😵💫
Every night my dead sister visits,
#resplendent
in white lace and pearls. Tears glitter her grey cheeks. ‘Leave him,’ she whispers. Every night I close my eyes, turn to the warmth of his broad back. With me, he’ll be different. With me, it’s love.
#9forNavaratri
Our Spring 24 Charity Flash Competition Longlist is here!
Hurrah! Well done to all who feature and heartfelt commiserations to those whose stories didn't get picked.
Please celebrate without identifying which story is yours to keep judging anonymous!
During winter, leaf mould buries her: only one arm exposed. Foxes sniff but don’t nibble. Come Spring, she’ll wake to scatter snowdrops, wipe grey from the clouds, restore the sun.
#30words30days
#mould
Midnight. Marauding Piskie gangs skeeterskitter along wainscots. Steal socks, smear light switches, stick up the toilet seat, swoop on sweeties. Skitterskeet home to laundry nests for a good day's sleep.
#30Words30Days
Gangs
Ah look! My first online published flash. Ian helps you choose the image and is so kind. I still love this picture for this story. Heartily recommend
@fffict
as a place to submit.
2 interviews this week, one job offer and waiting to see for other one 🤞. So I guess I’ll be employed soon, somewhere! Don't know how to tell the dog 🐕🦺🐶🥺
300 concrete trees: the council’s solution to urban leaf-fall. Mother Nature tendrils up through the paving. ‘Nice try,’ she hisses. Within days the posts are ivy-smothered: birds nest once more.
#30words30days
#nature
When the wizard knocked, my wings twitched but I sent him away sharpish. I belong here, with my knitting. Perfectly happy. Perfectly, utterly happy.
At night, I dream of flying.
#30words30days
belong
@sbearbergman
Arbitration between siblings (I’m an only child) and the extreme energy it takes to make two plates of food look identical - counting chips etc
Son finished his A levels today - they only took eleventy billion years.
Now he’s packing to go to Greece - kindly filling my anxiety bucket right back up in case I was about to relax ab his future for 5 minutes …
You don't make petal-perfume in a jam-jar anymore, you spray fake roses. Your clothes reek of cigarettes, pavements, boys. I sniff my disapproval: inhale the echo of last year’s apple-blossom.
#30words30days
#Blossom
After the Great Christmas Turkey Debacle they painted a red line across the kitchen. Dad got the oven, Mum the dishwasher. They shared the cat. Happiest they’ve been for years.
#30Words30Days
sharing
Raspberry-leaf eyes, strawberry nose, thorn teeth. She croons her baby into life and sends him out on moonless nights.
Scritch scratch. He’s at your window.
Scritch scratch. Hungry.
Scratch scritch.
#30words30days
#leaf
Make yourself princess-shape. Squeeze into too small shoes. Cut off toes as required. Leave by midnight. Hope he mistakes the slugs dripping from your mouth for diamonds, glinting in moonlight.
#30words30days
#shape
Calling all insomniacs and people not living by GMT.
My flash Unrequited will appear on the FlashFlood journal at around 2:20 a.m. (BST) on Saturday, the 24th of June 2023 (National Flash Fiction Day 2023).
I’m flabbergasted and delighted. Thank you
@nationalflashfd
I feel a lot of fragile, complex things about Mother’s Day, both about being a mother and about not being mothered for long enough.
I really appreciate everyone who acknowledges it can be a funny old day - this is the first time I ever have.
Nimble-toed we trip the light fantastic: weave in and out of streetlamp shadows, giddy on red wine and stolen kisses. Come dawn we’ll crawl home, shoeless. But tonight, we fly.
#30words30days
#light
Very good evening. V v pleased to be a runner up. Delighted and mortified in equal measure to hear my words read aloud - but read so well by
@ClaireLacey13
the delight outweighed the mortification
@bunsenbernerbmd
Cooper is pretty sure it’s dinner time tho it is
Only 3pm and dinner’s at 5
Or 4 if he asks often enough.
Paw on my knee, soulful
Eyes.
Reads me like an open book.
I fashion an effigy of midnight mud with earth from her grave, a whispered hope, blood from my wrist.
The night cranes forward, breathless.
Nothing.
—nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing—
#30words30days
#earth
Together we watch the evening slide across the hall. Together we climb the darkening stairs. Your hands tingle with the memory of my skin. I am yours. It’s not enough.
#30Words30Days
I smashed a mirror (mea culpa) and widdershinned round church (mea culpa) and the devil is fast approaching and not even a salt-spattered ritual will protect us (mea maxima culpa)
#30words30days
ritual
Am in Sri Lanka. Everyone told me it would be amazing: chilled out, friendly, delicious food. It is all that. 10/10 no notes.
Bonus content: Photo of a water buffalo chilling out mid-afternoon, up to its neck in … whatever that is. As you do.
In the grey space between night and day we creep home, tails between our legs …
Tonight—we promise—we’ll be different. Tonight we’ll resist the insistent song of the city …
#30words30days
#space
My college lover and I meet unexpectedly. He’s bald, bespectacled, besuited. Tells me about his wife and kids, his garden. Touches my arm and I am giddy, breathless, 19 again.
#30Words30Days
College
Lisette transfers her spirit to a jam jar. It’s too tender for this world, she says. Every day it shrivels, craving sunshine. By winter all that remains is marshmallow gloop.
#30words30days
#spirit
We thought our mohicans made us outcasts but now it’s apparent that a clique is invisible from the inside.
Poor doomed Claire, all lipgloss and pop-songs.
If only we’d known.
#30words30days
clique
I’m off to my meeting.’ Ma leaves a perfumed vapour-trail. Her vibrant floral top notes signal ‘Fresh Start’ but they can’t quite mask the juniper-stale undertone of ‘Not this Again’.
#30words30days
Meeting
My teeny tiny story with a really long title is in this issue. Previously LL
@RetreatWest
. I’m so fond of it and so pleased it found THE BEST home. I’d love you to read it
142 bottles, each containing the essence of a lost love. Agnes doesn’t bother opening them. She can’t clear her nose of her own smell - disappointment with a top-note of despair.
#30words30days
#essence
Every night now, claws at the door- scritch scratch scritch. Will you stay fireside, head in his lap, or will you run wild; bask in cold moonlight; wake alone, free?
#30words30days
#wild
@judepickledplum
and I (mostly Jude, to be fair) have created this thing of beauty for you. Submissions open soon. Sign up for future news!
Massive thanks to
@StillSquirrel
for fabulous artwork.
You can follow our EIC here:
@CapndaveNFNF
As pink dawn breaks, Dragon roars brimstone and yet another set of ironclad knights scuttle.
Back in her dark cave, Dragon curls her heavy tail around her egg and whimper-dreams of rescue.
#9forNavaratri
#courage
Craggy shoulders squared,
granite thighs steady.
Marble heart, bivalve heavy, pumping blood to
brachiopod laden limestone lungs.
A lifetime fossilised in flesh.
Igneous skin. Magma within.
This woman is ready.
#30words30days
#Rock
(First published 2020 so cheating a bit)
I have faith that if I find the right words,
you will be mine.
If I find the words. If I. The right words.
If. Words. If I find the right I —
will you?
#faith
#9forNavaratri
Since the Whipsnade riots of ‘56, elephants have ruled the South Downs. Now they’re on the march again, up as far as Wimbledon. How long before they reach Parliament? And who doesn’t secretly hope the elephants will win?
#9forNavaratri
It’s become a ritual of mine to enter, fail to get anywhere, try again, fail better (still don’t get anywhere but I can tell the difference 😁) . Third time the charm?
The 2023 award closes at midnight tomorrow so just 2 working days to get your entry in. 1st prize £1200 out of £1750 prize fund. Any theme/ genre but max wc 2200. Judge
@farhanashaikh
Honey blossom lingers on still evening air and I don’t believe in ghosts but if I did I’d turn: I’d breathe her in, as if I was a child again.
#30words30days
#air
He smelled of petrichor. It was the chief reason I loved him, why I ignored the sometimes whiff of cherry lipstick and fresh rubber. Day I got Covid I left.
#30Words30Days
I push away the screen. The crowd gasps. My wings shimmer in the theatre lights. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you with my final metamorphosis. Behold.’ Someone screams. Too late. I am complete. I am hungry.
#whqcommunity
#microflashmonday
Closing out your day with a little touch of microfiction, because you deserve a treat!
And boy do we have it! This tiny bit delivers a terse, succinct blow. This is "You will not always have a warning these sudden, deadly floods are coming" by Jackie Morris
@JackieMMorris
2/19!
Tree shadows. Undergrowth rustles, wolf howls. Hanz and I stumble trip, lost. Abandoned.
A light: a cottage. Candy coloured windows, gingerbread baking. Tummies rumble.
Push on the door. Step inside.
#30words30days
#Sanctuary
McGinty’s goat is a malevolent creature. One opal eye, blank as egg white, that’s bad enough, but the clear eye reflects your soul back at you, unless you bribe the beast with tobacco. McGinty’s never short of a smoke, alright.
#MicroflashMonday
and
#WHQCommunity
.
Maverick child. Lone sheriff in a one horse town. Ignore the whispers, little cowboy. Grow up; saddle up; skeddaddle. Head for big city lights and let your gold star shine.
#30Words30Days
Individual
Aunt Maud lives on a raincloud. Claims she’s happy being remote, away from the tedium of down-here.
Then Uncle Peter remarries.
Lightning flashes, storms rage and gales flatten the marquee.
#30words30days
#remote