Tag Archives: short-short stories

To the Moon and Back

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The A3 Review is looking for entries to their May contest. This month, they’re inviting stories, poems and artwork on the theme of The Moon. Mystery, cheesy, bloody, science-fictiony, or with cows jumping over it… they welcome all moon-inpired stories.

Stories about werewolves, high tide and low tide, moonlit sonatas, stories based on myths and folklore. Stories about dancing to the light of the moon. What happens to you on nights when the moon is full? Write about that!

For more lunar inspiration, and to enter The A3 Review‘s May contest, check out our Submittable page.

As always, the word limit is 150 words, and all artwork needs to fit into an A6 panel.

Mooning anecdotes most welcome!

Visit them at TheA3Review.com.

 

Going Round in Circles?

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circlesIf you’re going round in circles, we want to hear about it. This month’s theme is the title theme for our next issue, Issue 9, The Circles Issue.

The A3 Review is looking for stories, poems and artwork about circles of trust and circular logic, running circles around someone and being in or outside the circle. We’d love stories and concrete poems in the shape of a circle or a spiral. See our Submittable page for all the details and more inspiration.

Each month’s 2 winners are published in The A3 Review, receive gifts from Writing Maps, and are in the running to win cash prizes. All the details are here.

Our current issue, Issue 8, is at the printers, and should be on its way out into the world by the end of April. Pre-order a copy here.

25th November. Flashy times in Bristol and Bath

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Bath-Flash-Fiction-AwardSome people write a  novel in November. Others write a flash a day. Join in the November flashy fun at Bath Flash Fiction Award’s ‘Flashathon’, an intensive day of writing and editing flash fiction at Trinity College, Bristol this coming Saturday 25th November, from 10:00 am- 4:00 pm. Be inspired by a variety of prompts from Meg Pokrass, flash fiction writer editor and tutor and current judge for the Bath Flash Fiction novella-in-flash award and Jude Higgins  flash fiction writer and founder of the Bath Flash Fiction Award. You’re guaranteed to produce at least six new pieces plus get advice, tips and encouragement on all aspects of flash. £45

NoirflashLater the same day come to ‘Flash Noir’ at, St James’ Wine Vaults Bath, an evening of darker-themed flash fiction . From 7.30-9.30pm. Six writers reading short- short stories. Expect suspense, mini-thrillers and black comedy from published  flash writers, Meg Pokrass, KM Elkes, Jason Jackson Damhnait Monaghan, John Wheway and Christopher Stanley. Cost £5. Free nibbles. Late Bar. Students can come free. Hope to see you there.

Book soon here for both events

Normal Deviation: Seeking Short Stories Based on One Weird Pic

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It all started with a weird pic and a throwaway tweet:

I want to do a fiction anthology where everyone writes a story just based on a weird ass picture. And then use that pic as the cover.

And then enough people cheered the idea that we decided to make it our first major project at Wonderbox Publishing.

Normal Deviation is seeking “Third Option” short stories based on the following image, up to 6000 words (deadline: 31 Aug 2017). “Third Option” is our shorthand for digging a little deeper into that writerly creativity bucket: we’d like everyone to cast aside (at least) the first two ideas that come to you, and instead focus on the third (or fourth or fifth…) idea to develop. The goal here is to avoid the obvious, to generate fresh ideas, to get at deviation.

We want stories in any genre, from any perspective, any time period and setting. As long as the story is good, and based somehow on this image, we want to read it!

image for inspiration

We’ve launched a Kickstarter to fund the anthology, as we think all authors deserve professional rates (starting at least at a penny per word). Support us, support authors, and please submit and become one of our authors!

Full details and author guidelines are on our website. Subscribe to updates from our weekly blog, get a feel for what we’re like and what we like, and join us in this bizarre story adventure!

Lyle Skains & DeAnn Bell, Editors
Normal Deviation anthology
Wonderbox Publishing

Spelk: Open for Submissions

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Spelk is open for submissions.

Our current reading period is February 14 to March 12.

We will let you know by mid-March if your story has been accepted.

Submission guidelines: http://spelkfiction.com/submit-2/

Please keep the following in mind if you’d like to send us something:

  • We publish flash fiction — 500 words, give or take.
  • We’ll consider just about any genre: we’re not fussy if it’s “literary” or “non-literary.” If we like it, we’ll publish it.
  • We don’t publish poetry or non-fiction.
  • We post three stories a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
  • We want previously unpublished stories. If you’ve got something good, we want it to appear on Spelk first.
  • We accept simultaneous submissions, but let us know if you place your story somewhere else.
  • We don’t accept multiple submissions, so just one story at a time please.
  • We don’t pay. Sorry.
  • You retain all rights to your story, but we’d like to archive it on our site.
  • Spell-check your story before you send it. Proof it. Make sure it’s the best you can make it.
  • Send us a Word document and include a short bio at the end of your story. Let us know if you’re on Facebook or Twitter, or if you have your own website.
  • Email your story to Gary Duncan at spelkfiction@gmx.com (subject line: SUBMISSIONS — “STORY TITLE”).

Orange as Inspirational Fruit

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orangesThe holiday season is on its way, but don’t let that distract you from writing… and entering The A3 Review’s last monthly contest of 2016.

This month’s theme is Orange Things: an antidote to the grey winter weather (or to echo the sunshine if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere). Deadline for entries is 24th December. We won’t be expecting you to address festive topics (do people still put satsumas into Christmas stockings?) or even The Donald’s tan and hair dye!

We’re looking for short fiction, poetry and artwork that reflects the complexity and uniqueness of ‘orange’ – an ancient word and one of the few which (fun fact alert) has no direct rhymes in English, only half-rhymes.

Write about the colour orange and its associations with places: an orange beach under an orange sun with melting orange ice-lollies. Write or draw the moods and situations associated with orange: warmth, fire, energy, danger. Or explore the association of orange and religion: Irish Protestant links with Orange in France, the meaning of the colour for Hindus and Buddhists. The Dutch House of Orange.

Visit our Submittable page for more inspiration.

“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now’.” Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.

Each month we choose two winning pieces for publication in our six-monthly journal. All winning entries receive Writing Maps and contributor copies, while three overall winners for each issue receive cash prizes totalling £275.

Follow us on Twitter and sign up to our newsletter. And if you’re looking for detailed, knowledgeable and forward-looking feedback on your short fiction, editors KM Elkes and Shaun Levin offer a critique service for writers. To find out more about it, click here.

Out Now – Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, 7.2 (October 2014)

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Issue 7.2 of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine is now available.

It features new stories from Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, and the USA. We are particularly pleased to open with pieces by two distinguished European writers, in luminous translations: two ‘zkv’s (‘zeer korte verhalen’ [very short stories]) by A. L. Snijders, who coined the term, translated from the Dutch by Man Booker International winner Lydia Davis; and three pieces from Austrian writer Josef Winkler’s When the Time Comes (2013), translated by Adrian West, originally published in German as Wenn es soweit ist – Erzählung (1998). Wonderful renderings by West of Winkler also appeared in Flash, 6.1. Davis’s impressive Collected Stories (2009) was featured in the ‘Flash Presents’ section of 6.2; her latest collection, Can’t and Won’t, is enthusiastically reviewed in this issue by Robert Shapard, editor of influential flash and sudden-fiction anthologies.

This issue’s ‘Flash Presents’ contains four stories by Virginia Woolf: ‘A Haunted House’, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, ‘Blue & Green’, and ‘In the Orchard’. These are followed by our fourth ‘Flash Essay’. In ‘“Splinters & mosaics”: Virginia Woolf’s Flash Fictions’, Kathryn Simpson argues that Woolf’s experimental flashes provide insight into her emergence as a major modernist novelist and her enduring preoccupations.

‘Flash Reviews’ examines two other single-author books and two anthologies. Laurie Champion is entertained by Lucy Corin’s One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses, a collection of short and short-short stories, while Christine Simon is intrigued by Will Eaves’s The Absent Therapist, a novel in flashes. Robert Scotellaro enjoys Tara Laskowski’s selection from ten years of the SmokeLong Quarterly, while Ian Seed embraces the longer perspective of Alan Ziegler’s Short, which ranges over five centuries of brief prose. Each review is accompanied by a sample story. Laskowski’s anthology is represented by Jeff Landon’s ‘Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub’, Ziegler’s by Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Artist’.

To order a copy of the issue, or to subscribe to the magazine, go to: http://www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine

Peter Blair and Ashley Chantler (Editors)

Out Now: Issue 6.2 of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine

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Issue 6.2 of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine is now available.

Contributors include: Lydia Davis, Ihab Hassan, Nuala Ni Chonchuir, Ian Seed, and Shellie Zacharia. Jane Hertenstein contributes the flash essay ‘The Mystery of Memory; or How to Write Memoir-ish’. And there are reviews of collections by Dan Rhodes, David Gaffney, Dan Rhodes, and Peter Cherches.

For further information and to order a copy, go to: http://www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine

Flash 6.2 Front Cover