Posts Tagged ‘flasher’

The West Port Book Festival is hosting their first Literary Twestival in Edinburgh on August 14th. But you don't have to be within a thousand miles of the place to participate…

Just post your short-short-short story to your Twitter account and include the hashtag #wpss (for West Port Short Story). The best will be presented ay the Festival, as people on site are invited to create their own on the spot. Or submit a Collective Noun for their approval (such as "A wunch of bankers," " ______ of mime artists,"A whorde of prostitutes," etc).

No prizes (that I know of), just the fun of stretching your mind in a little tiny space. And check out the ones already submitted here.

Want to read some quick fiction?

It doesn't get quicker than what you'll find at Thaumatrope , the first zine I've seen published through Twitter.  I'm assuming you know what Twitter is, of course.  Social text messaging service where messages are limited to a dumbphone's text message limit of 140 characters.

And yes, you can deliver complete stories in that amazingly limited amount of space. Earnest Hemingway once famously wrote one in six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” And Wired asked lots of writers for their six-word creations last year. It can be done, and it's a cool idea.

Thaumatrope bills itself as "a magazine for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror fiction".  So far it features reviews of books and games, intensely short fiction, ongoing tweets from the future, and even an interview with author John Scalzi ("Why?" "There is no why. Causality is for amateurs.") And the part that amuses the hell out of me is this: they pay for fiction. 5 cents a word, average for the market. Actually they pay a flat $1.20 per accepted story.

I love stuff like this. If you recall I made the cover of The Writer for their feature on shortingly-short fiction. It's challenging and fun and maddening. So you'll be seeing my tiny byline there a few times over the next year, until they make me stop.

The January edition of The Writer magazine (on sale now) has a feature on writing flasher stories and there's an entire story on the cover with a familiar byline. Turns out I can write short stories and three years of newspaper columns with little recognition, and a quickie story I wrote for the heck of it for BirdandMoon.com's 55-word challenge gets me the cover. Gotta love it.

Here's the whole thing (but you should buy a copy anyway, for more comments from me and a nice long article on short, short stories). 55 words, not counting the title.

He Met Her

He met her at the club, lights flashing, music battering.

"So, you heard about my job."

"Yeah."

"But you know, I've learned something. With your love, I can go on even without the big bucks."

"I've learned something, too."

"Really?"

"Yes. I'm much more shallow than I thought."

And she smiled, sadly, and walked away.

Margie hated February 15th.

Bad enough she didn't have her own valentine, but she had to clean up after the ones that did, and that was torture.

The sheets in 206 were covered in baby oil. Flower petals and torn lingerie clogged up the tub in 210. 211's headboard was actually dented, for God's sake.

Grumbling, she pushed into 212 and found another depressed soul. Alone, sitting on the bed, still in a tuxedo, he was staring at an unopened box of chocolates and looking handsome and vulnerable.

"Happy Valentine's Day to me," Margie whispered, and she closed the door.

A last touch of makeup, and she was complete. Her eyes opened.

“Where am I? Who are you?”

“You are the finest woman in creation, and I am your creator. I spent twenty years crafting you to be the most beautiful, intelligent, sensual woman that ever existed. Look at yourself.”

“Oh! That’s me? I look like a goddess!”

“You are a goddess, and together we will scale the heights of ecstasy!”

“But you look kind of ordinary.”

“Yes, well, I am but a normal human.”

“Huh.” She looked in the mirror again. “I can do better,” she said, and left.

Shelby suddenly stopped with her drink halfway to her lips.

"Something wrong, miss?" the bartender asked.

"I just realized," she said, amazed. "I've had sex with everyone in this room."

"Pardon?"

"My ex-boyfriend is over there, with his brother. I've done 'em both. The man that just walked in is my neighbor. And I used to work for the dark-haired guy at the end of the bar, we were very close."

"And the lady with him?"

"We were even closer."

"That still leaves one."

She turned, slowly, and looked at him. "Why, so it does," she said, and she smiled.

Saw a link off the QuestionableContent.net site about a lady who writes 55-word stories. Complete beginning-middle-and-end stories, often with illustrations. She also accepts submissions, and I was curious to see if I could write one, so…

Here's mine.

"What the hell are you doing?"

She started, guiltily, dropping the pills, before her usual melodrama caused her to swoon majestically in black leather and heavy eyeliner. "Bereft of love in this wretched plane, I seek the affections of la belle dame sans merci to kiss these cold lips!"

The sight of this otherwise beautiful woman gothed to a ridiculous extreme touched my heart once again. I embraced her with all the love and warmth I'd been saving for her, unnoticed. She melted with surprise against my warmth, my life.

"She's not your type," I said, and I kissed her.

"So, Mr. Flint, at last you're mine. Finally I shall get what I want."

Flint pulled helplessly at the ropes. He couldn't get free, she had his guns and his watch, and his wireless molar required line-of-sight to work. "Never!" he spat, thinking furiously.

She straddled him, her weight pressing pleasantly against his body. "Never?"

"I'll never talk! No secrets, no codes, no aaahh!" He moaned as she thrust her tongue into his ear.

"I don't want your secrets," she murmured.

"You don't? Then why…?"

"Don't you ever go off-duty?" she asked, and, careful of tripwires, she unbuttoned his shirt.