Flash Fiction Chronicles

by Aliza Greenblatt

Flash Fiction Chronicles interviewed Michelle Ann King about Every Day Fiction’s Top Story for March, “Not the Pizza Girl“ a story about deliveries, demons, and a race against time. 

Aliza Greenblatt:  According to your biography, you’ve had many different careers – insurance claims handler, tarot reader, and makeup artist – before becoming a full time writer.  What made you want to pursue writing professionally? Do experiences from past careers often find their way into your stories?

Michelle Ann King:  Writing is something I’ve done for fun all my life–one of my very earliest memories is of making up stories about my favourite toy, a space-faring poodle called Charlotte. In recent years, the internet created a whole new market for short stories, and the revolution in e-books made self-publishing a viable option–so when I was made redundant from my last office job it seemed like a serendipitous opportunity to make a hobby into something more.

I think all writers use their past experiences in one way or another–to a large extent, ‘write what you know’ is less advice than inevitability. Certainly, I can immediately think of two of my stories that feature tarot card readers and claims handlers.

AG:  Was there any particular prompt or inspiration for Not the Pizza Girl? Did you have any specific goals when writing this story?

MK:  Tying in with the answer above, when I was a make-up artist I would often drive miles to see a client who would totally have forgotten about the appointment by the time I got there–so a lot of Lisa’s frustration is pure autobiography. The idea was inspired by reading two stories in quick succession that both featured pizza boys, and I started thinking about what else people might want to be delivered quickly.

AG:  Can you tell me a little about your writing process?

MK:  A lot of my ideas are sparked by other stories–something I read jumps out at me, and takes me in a new direction. I usually rough out a basic outline using a version of the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet (http://www.blakesnyder.com/tools/) and then write the story in the kind of  ‘cycle draft’ that Dean Wesley Smith uses: run at it until you hit a wall, cycle up and re-read until it prompts you forward again, then repeat until done.  Dean Wesley Smith’s whole blog is fascinating reading, especially the ‘Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing’ series: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/

I also try hard to follow the advice of Heinlein’s Rules and Ray Bradbury: write, finish, submit, write more.  The Write1Sub1 community (http://www.write1sub1.com/) helps massively with this. It’s a wonderful, friendly and supportive group that I’d recommend to all short fiction writers.

AG:  What are some of the challenges of writing stories that are both flash and genre (science fiction/fantasy/crime)?  What, if anything, is simpler?  Were there any particular challenges with this story being both fantasy and humorous?

MK:  I love flash, because it’s so versatile. You can tell a novel-length story through hints and implications, do slice-of-life (which is always fascinating with a speculative spin) or tell the intimate, detailed story of single minute. With crime, you can put high focus on intense moments or mindsets that would get too much in a longer story. Humour is always tricky, because it’s so subjective. The best you can ever do is write something that amuses you and hope for the best. In a way, I think fantasy can make it a little easier, because the juxtaposition of something mundane, that everybody can relate to, with something unexpected or weird, can be funny in itself. A lot of the humour in Not the Pizza Girl comes from Lisa’s very pragmatic, jaded attitude towards what to us seems like an extraordinary situation.

AG:  There is an interesting duality of the tension in this story.  One part of it is Lisa’s race against time, which is her primary concern.  The second is the slow dread the reader experiences as we realize that Lisa is standing on the porch of a house that has terrible things going on within. And the occupants do not seem…stable. It made me wonder, what sort of training (if any) does a delivery girl like Lisa need for her job? Is it a common occupation or is “Eddie’s Ethereal Emporium” a niche business?

The ‘ticking clock’ aspect was one of the first elements of the story, and the rest built around it.  I love the idea of ‘emergency magical supplies,’ and I see this as a world where magic is real but new–leading to a lot of people ending up with emergencies. I think Eddie spotted a need and stepped in to fill it–the equivalent of the first plumber to offer a 24 hour on-call service. I envisage this as a family business, with Lisa as a highly-trained magical expert who gets press-ganged into taking over whatever job currently needs doing.

AG:  What other projects are you working on now? Are there other stories of yours, either upcoming or published, that you can point readers to?

MK:  I think there are definitely more stories to be told about Lisa’s world, and it’s something I want to explore further. For now, my latest story, a dark fantasy called ‘Never Leave Me,’ will be published at Daily Science Fiction (http://dailysciencefiction.com/ ) on Monday 22nd April. (And if anyone would like to see a breakdown of how this story was structured with the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet, I’ll be guest posting shortly at Dianna L Gunn’s blog, http://diannaswritingden.com/ ) I also have a horror story in the upcoming issue of The Journal of Unlikely Entomology–where I share a ToC with Cat Rambo, which is a huge thrill!

The first two volumes in my Transient Tales series of short stories are now available, plus a collection of crime flash. Details can be found at my website, http://transientcactus.co.uk/

AG:  Thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us. Best of luck with all your writing endeavors. 

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  Aliza T. Greenblatt works in a firmly non-writing field when the sun is up and writes under a desk lamp at night.  Fueled by a sheer love of books and a tyrannical imagination, she writes the stories that appear over her morning coffee and won’t leave her alone until they are put down on paper.  She writes, raves, and blogs at http://atgreenblatt.com. and on Twitter @AtGreenblatt

by Aliza T. Greenblatt

Flash Fiction Chronicles interviewed Kevin McNeil about Every Day Fiction’s Top Story for January, “The Merry Jester“  a story about a family heirloom and the power of faith.

Aliza T. Greenblatt:  From your short bio it seems like you have been active in the writing community; attending two intense workshops, reading for Lightspeed and Nightmare, as well as conducting a few author interviews yourself.  From doing a quick search (and correct me if I’m wrong), “The Merry Jester” appears to be your first published story.  Congratulations!  How does it feel to be a published writer?

Kevin McNeil:  Thank you!  And you’re right. “The Merry Jester” is my first published story.  I began writing fiction in 2010, and attended Kij Johnson’s novel writing workshop in 2011, which was my first chance to learn some of the fundamentals.  So I’m still pretty new to all of this, and up until now, I’d pretty much kept everything I’d written to myself.  Putting things out there is scary, but it feels great to see it on-line at Every Day Fiction.

ATG:  Can you tell me a little about your writing process for this story?

KM:  My approach to this story was very different from how I normally work.  I blame Jeanne Cavelos, who is the director of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, which I attended in 2012.  One of the requirements of the workshop is the Odyssey Slam, where everyone in the class reads a flash story at a Barnes and Nobles.  I hadn’t written any flash stories, so I worked this up in order to have something to read

I’ll be honest — my only goal was to write something I could read without embarrassing myself.  I deliberately excluded dialogue in order to make the reading easier.  I’m still at a stage where most of what I write is an experiment to improve some aspect of my writing.  In this case, I wanted to write something very focused, with a consistent tone, that would get me back into my seat before anyone realized I didn’t know what I was doing.  And in the end, the Odyssey Slam turned out to be a great time.

ATG: Your bio says you work as a physical therapist and that you are a coach for the Special Olympics.  Has working with people who are combating personal challenges influenced this piece at all?  Or was it inspired by something else altogether?

KM:  I’m sure the work I do with people overcoming injuries and dealing with personal challenges influences most things in my life.  I love getting people back on their feet, and coaching kids I consider to be the greatest athletes in the world is incredibly rewarding.  In the case of this story, if my background was an influence at all, it was unconscious.

The inspiration for this story was a wooden marionette (like the one I described) my wife and I purchased while we were traveling in Prague a few years ago.  I usually like to take my time and plot out my story ideas, but with this one I just thought about the marionette and wrote to see what I’d come up with.  At first, it seemed to be straight horror, where the jester wasn’t such a good thing to have around your house.  Eventually, the story ended up in another direction, exploring the idea of faith, which is why there are some hints to religion in the word choices.

ATG:Part of what I found so interesting about this story is the idea of value and how it changes as a person changes, though the object remains the same.  The jester becomes more valuable when Matthew has more in life to lose.  Do you think the jester is created to protect its family or is it Matthew’s belief in it that gives it power?

KM:  I suppose this could be interpreted however the reader wants, but for me it’s Matthew’s belief that gives the jester power.  Belief is powerful.  There’s a Henry Ford quote I like: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”  In my experience, what you focus on, what you believe, is what you get.  We’re able to give a lot of things power in this way.  And if we believe we’re right (politics, religion, whatever), it’s difficult to convince us we might be wrong.

ATG: By the end of the story, Matthew suffers from a form of survivor’s guilt.  He comes to both love and fear the jester and will never let any harm come to it.  But it makes me wonder, what sort of stories will Matthew tell his daughter about the puppet, knowing that she will one day have to face its painted smile?  How will he handle his own guilt?

KM:  This is a tough question.  I left Matthew in a confused place where he needs the jester, but is also beginning to question it in some ways.  But I think Matthew is committed.  He’ll deal with his guilt, thinking it’s what he has to do to protect his family.  He believes what he’s been told about the jester, and he’s seen enough to confirm these things for himself.  I think Matthew will pass the information on to his daughter as it was told to him, so that she and her future family will also be able to live a healthy life.  But I don’t know if the faith of the next generation is ever as strong as the previous one.  What I wonder is whether the daughter will truly value the jester, or if she’ll end up putting it in a box in a closet.

ATG:  What other projects are you working on now?  Are there other stories of yours, either upcoming or published, that you can point readers to?

KM:  Right now I’m completely focused on short stories – working on my own ideas, and also reading stories for Lightspeed and Nightmare.  I have a sports mentality, and a lot to learn, so I feel like I’m still in training, putting in my practice time, trying new techniques, and challenging myself.  I’m just beginning to submit stories to magazines.  Even “The Merry Jester” took some arm-twisting from a friend to finally submit to Every Day Fiction.  I’m enjoying the work right now, and hopefully I’ll have some more out there for people to read soon – as much as that scares me.

ATG:  Thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us.  Best of luck with all your writing endeavors

KM:  Thanks for the great questions, Aliza.  Every Day Fiction had some really great stories in January.  So thanks to everyone who enjoyed “The Merry Jester.”

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Aliza T. Greenblatt works in a firmly non-writing field when the sun is up and writes under a desk lamp at night.  Fueled by a sheer love of books and a tyrannical imagination, she writes the stories that appear over her morning coffee and won’t leave her alone until they are put down on paper.  She writes, raves, and blogs at http://atgreenblatt.com. and on Twitter @AtGreenblatt

by Aliza T. Greenblatt

Flash Fiction Chronicles interviewed Mickey Hunt about Every Day Fiction’s Top Story for December, “Deprescience“  a surprising story about the power of memories.

Aliza T. Greenblatt:  You are the author of several short stories as well as a few books.  What made you decide to pick up the pen?

Mickey Hunt: Since childhood, I’ve always loved stories—hearing, reading, and watching them.  And I loved reading them out loud to our children.  I’ve read Lord of the Rings out loud four times and most of Harry Potter aloud once.  It’s fun giving different voices to the characters (I was a puppeteer once with the Tears of Joy Puppet Theatre).  Making up stories is part of that love and it’s gotten to be a habit.  I hear an odd idea and start filling in the details.  Stories are how we organize the facts of our lives into meaning.  We learn truth from stories.

Beginning in January of year 2000 I stopped writing opinion pieces and started a novel instead, which I saw as being a more humanly complete form of persuasion.

ATG: Do you face any particular challenges when writing flash fiction?

MH: Flash fiction.  It demands a higher level of perfection than a longer format, but it allows it too, because there’s less material.  Flash fiction compared to a longer story is like a word processing program to a manual typewriter, it makes writing more accessible.

ATG: Does anything become easier?

MH:  For me, not really, because there’s so much more to learn.  I hope I’m getting better.  Most of my flash pieces are written fast.  I can put down the structure for a story in an hour or less.  That’s the fun part.  Then, for a couple days I’m always scribbling down notes to add in.  That’s fun, too.  The hard part is fixing things that come up from critiques.  Decision making.  What I love about Every Day Fiction is the hands on collaboration from your slush readers and editors.  And even though it’s hard sometimes to see the weakness that others see, in the end, it’s fun meeting the challenges.

ATG: Memories are a focal point for both “Deprescience” and your mini biography at the end of the piece.  I’m guessing a bit here, but this seems like an important topic to you.  Is it or is it just something you’ve been pondering lately?

MH: I’m 60 now and more of my downtime mental life is occupied with memory, since the past is a dominant portion of my existence.  There’s so much of it in comparison.

I wrote in the comments that the story grew out of my own thoughts about growing older, and specifically my children becoming more independent and establishing their own lives.  We have six children and our home was the center of joyful activity.  We still have two children living at home, but at 17 and 20, they are more adults than children.  But I went through a month or so recently of missing the children when they were younger.  They as little children are gone.  We have many photographs of a life that’s gone.  And yet I have to see our future as being rich with possibilities.  That what was our past in some ways will also be our future.   I don’t recall exactly how, but this turned into “Deprescience.”  I just learned that “we” are expecting another grandchild, so in a practical way the story is true.

ATG: Can you tell me a little about your writing process?

MH:  A story starts with an idea or image, something that jumps out.  An odd circumstance or new perspective.  The seed then germinates into plot, setting, and characters.  A short piece gets written in a passion.  A longer piece needs discipline, like a certain number of words per day.  I often do extensive research for my stories.  A lot of creative aspects of a story come when I’m walking for exercise, when I’m not thinking about anything.  The exciting part of writing, other than having people take your fabrications seriously, is when a brilliancy comes to you in the midst of composition.  Like, you could never think of that unless you already were deep into the story already.  Kind of like finding your way in an old familiar neighborhood after an absence.  You could never chart your course from where you are to your destination; you just feel your way and take clues from your surroundings.  An example is my current flash in progress.  Two words in the text grabbed me by the ears.  I played with them on Google search for a couple minutes and found my title, “The Cruller Twist.”  I won’t spoil anything if I say it’s about pastries and opera.  It started with a remark from my son when he served a cake he made for my wife’s birthday party this month.

ATG: As I read, I found myself wondering if Tim will have to reconstruct the memories of his childhood because he spent his whole life mourning the future.  Do you think he’ll be able to salvage it or must he first learn how to live? Will his future be altered because his visions will begin to impact his present decisions?

MH:I don’t know.  <laughing> You’re asking for a sequel.  But, yes, I imagine he will need to process it all through.  It’s too bad that Grandma won’t be there to help him.  Likely, not understanding his gift for so long has permanently changed him, but as a writer that pain he endured will give his work power and depth.  I suppose in real life a lot of children endure pain and some of them will be diminished and others will turn their pain into triumph for themselves and others.

Will his future be altered?  There’s a great body of speculative literature on that question.  It’s in the marvelous sci-fi film “Push” 2009 where a character says, “The future is always changing.”  So, of course it changes Tim’s future, but exactly how is the question.  In Oedipus, and elsewhere, the actions taken to flee from fate actually bring fate about.   In the real world we all have a certain level of prescience.  I mean we can predict results of our proposed actions or non-actions, the outcomes, and it affects our behavior, which changes the future.

And just because Tim sees the future or some aspects of it as it relates to his own life, doesn’t mean he will see clearly or make the best decisions.  “We see through a glass darkly.” The prophets of the Old Testament probably understood little of what they saw.  I wrote Tim to be a sincere and compassionate person, so I guess I have hope for him.

ATG: Do you think that because Tim is “remembering” future, he will be disappointed with it when it arrives, like seeing your favorite childhood movie when you’re grown and realizing that it’s not as great as you remember it?

MH:  The element of surprise might be missing, but I don’t think his gift alters his life in any essential way.  It’s just something he needs to deal with.  I mean, the childhood movie might be better than you remember it.   Or, marriage may not be all that the princess imagines—the prince of her dreams might become a cad in middle age.   Which, now that I think of it, a good bit of what Tim “preknows” will be tragic.  The story, though, mostly plays upon a future filled with bright things, those mentioned in his essay.

I never had this in mind when I wrote “Deprescience”—it’s a thought that came to me much later—of how what we’ve lost will exist in our future.   This is from my perspective as a Christian, and that’s what God provides in Heaven. I don’t mean to preach, but this is just my take.  We gain what we lose, what we give away.  The story unintentionally points to this truth.

ATG: What other projects are you working on now? Are there other stories of yours, either upcoming or published, that you can point readers to?

MH:  A few of my stories feature an aspect subversive to the dominant culture, and so some readers might find them oppressive.  I hope not.

For general audiences, I think the somewhat fantastical “Miss Thurman’s Intervention” might be fun.  A young man who is a neatnik does yard work for an older woman who is a hoarder.

I’m trying to find a home now for my sci-fi flash “Spark” which humorously (I hope) explores the question of a finite universe.   Congruously, “Spark” is 501 words.  I’ll soon be seeking a publisher for “Turtle of the World” a longer paranormal environmental tale about the hemlock tree and its real world nemeses, the woolly adelgid.  It brings in a Cherokee creation legend.   The story takes place here in western North Carolina.

Then there’s the novelette, “Shoreless Ocean of Eternity” which is a completed “time transcendence” prequel to a futuristic novel, Clouds Fall to Earth about a people who have lived on dirigibles for 1200 years.  Writing flash fiction, I’m afraid, is a procrastination from this project.

Once I get tired of submitting a story, I put it on my own website.  Readers can find these orphans and links to my few published stories there.

ATG: Thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us. Best of luck with all your writing endeavors.

MH: Sure.  Thanks so much for the opportunity, and for this amazing publication.  You really have something impressive going here.

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Mickey Hunt holds a BS degree in Agriculture from Berea College in Kentucky and a BS in Ag Education from Washington State University.  Chaotic terrain, as in his website domain name http://www.chaoticterrain.com is an astrogeological term used to denote planetary surfaces where features such as ridges, cracks, and plains appear jumbled and enmeshed with one another.

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Aliza T. Greenblatt works in a firmly non-writing field when the sun is up and writes under a desk lamp at night.  Fueled by a sheer love of books and a tyrannical imagination, she writes the stories that appear over her morning coffee and won’t leave her alone until they are put down on paper.  She writes, raves, and blogs at http://atgreenblatt.com. and on Twitter @AtGreenblatt

by Aliza T. Greenblatt

Flash Fiction Chronicles interviewed Dustin Adams about Every Day Fiction’s Top Story for November, “The Gift“  a thought provoking tale about the dangers of knowing and not knowing.

ATG: A few weeks ago, you mentioned in a blog post that you were reeling from the news that “The Gift ” is one of the EDF’s top stories of all time. Have you gotten used to the idea yet?

DA: Is it still up there? Wait, don’t tell me. To be honest, I had to stop checking after the first two weeks. I took a screenshot and saved it as a .jpg, immortalized. I was glad to receive notification that this story was tops for November. Guess it’s still going strong.

What’s really fun is that where normally I’d social network the news of my story’s publication, but this came out on November 2nd, which was just after Superstorm Sandy. Thus, I had no power and didn’t get to tell those I know for a few days. By then, the story had reached #1 on its own.

ATG: Was there any particular prompt or inspiration for this piece? Did you have any specific goals when writing this story?

DA: I’m a bit of a shut in. I live in the middle of nowhere, and I work from home. So when I get around people, I often wish I already knew them, that they were old friends and we could shake hands and I’d ask how they’ve been.

Specifically, while sitting in an airport, I spotted an elderly man in a wheelchair. He was all alone, and I wanted to know his story. He’d had an entire life of experiences and stories and yet there he was just sitting there alone, smacking his dry lips together waiting for whoever plopped him there to return.

If I knew him, if everyone knew everyone, there would be no stranger barrier between us, and I could have kept him company. I like to think that loneliness would disappear because we’d all know each other’s plights and we’d all have empathy for each other.

Which brings me at last to the second part of your question. My goal was to show that Jessica, the main character, had no empathy. That the gift merely gave her information, but didn’t hurt in the way it pained the other two characters. Lines like: “I’m so sorry, Phil.” I said what I thought I should. and “But why was he crying?” were supposed to accomplish this, but my feedback has been that this didn’t quite hit that mark, but that it didn’t matter. (Whew!)

ATG: Can you tell me a little about your writing process?

DA: I don’t have a process per se. What I do is force myself to get up at 5AM every morning. (OK, sometimes I hit snooze once or twice.) I write every day unless I’m fighting a cold. I’m not a finesse writer, I write far more words than I submit, but I keep pounding away. Momentum is key.

ATG: Part of what I loved about this story was how just enough information was given to keep the reader comfortable, but not enough so that it ruined the mystery of the story.  I think it’s safe to say that it’s the unanswered questions in this piece makes this story so captivating. Was it a struggle to find the right balance of information?

DA: One of my writing tips is to imagine dropping important information or backstory or scenery/sensory information into the story like chocolate chips. They usually take the form of a single sentence between longer paragraphs. They’re the sweet stuff. What’s a chocolate chip cookie without the chocolate chips?

My favorite chip is, “Jean glared at me.” Phil’s recent frown (read: cookie) sets this up. My hope was that aiming these negative words toward Jessica would alert the reader, subconsciously or consciously that we’ve turned a corner story-wise and that we’re sliding into a darker tale.

I’m not sure that answered the question. Was it a struggle? Indeed. When writing, everything makes perfect sense to the author, it’s only after others read it that we learn if what we wrote works or not. I’m glad this one did.

ATG: The main character, Jessica, argues that knowing her past actions without knowing her motivations paints an incomplete picture of her. Like seeing the final scores of a close game, but not the actual match.  Do you think this was an oversight by the aliens or did they design The Gift so that humanity keeps asking questions about itself?

DA: I love the sports reference! That’s exactly right. I believe the aliens have no clue. They’re so used to being in each others heads that they have no idea the damage their gift causes when given to the inexperienced.

Imagine giving a car to an Australian Bushman. We all have cars, right? He could use one. First he’d be confused, then, when accepting this gift is part of his life, gets behind the wheel and promptly crashes.

ATG: What other projects are you working on now? Are there other stories of yours, either upcoming or published, that you can point readers to?

DA: Jennifer Campbell-Hicks (multiple EDF author) and I write one flash fiction a month, exchange with just each other, then submit. So to answer the question, I’m working on a flash. *grin*. I’m also perpetually editing my fourth novel. Before I’d written one, my plan was that the first three don’t count, and I’d submit the fourth. So far so good, but I’m afraid that’s hamstringing me into never actually finishing the darn thing. I want it to be perfect, and while I know that’s not possible, I continue to try.

I’ve got three stories here at EDF, and one elsewhere. The best place to keep up with my publications is on my blog. http://dustinadams.wordpress.com Although I don’t update it nearly as often as I’d like, the publication section is always current.

ATG: Thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us. Best of luck with all your writing endeavors.

Thank *you* for this opportunity. I want to give a quick shout out to Joseph Kaufman. Without his input, this story (and my other EDF stories) wouldn’t have been nearly as good. If anyone has a gift, it’s him.

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Dustin Adams owns and runs his own Customs brokerage business. It’s an intense, mind-stimulating job that requires extraordinary focus and attention. He began writing short stories while in high school. Then for some unknown reason (video games) he stopped for a decade or so (really fun video games). Now, knocking loudly on age 40’s door, he’s writing full-on with piston engine fingers. He writes in the morning, in the dark, and has seen the sun rise several thousand times.

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Aliza T. Greenblatt works in a firmly non-writing field when the sun is up and writes under a desk lamp at night.  Fueled by a sheer love of books and a tyrannical imagination, she writes the stories that appear over her morning coffee and won’t leave her alone until they are put down on paper.  She writes, raves, and blogs at http://atgreenblatt.com. and on Twitter @AtGreenblatt

by Thomas Jay Rush

Flash Fiction Chronicles interviewed Gretchen Bassier about Every Day Fiction’s Top Story for October, “The Pumpkin Master.”

FFC: Congratulations. Your story won story of the month for October.

Gretchen Bassier: Thank you!

FFC: The title, “The Pumpkin Master,” carries a hint of menace. If there isn’t already a Hollywood horror movie with that title, there should be. But Peter’s carvings, from the very start, are the opposite of horrific. In fact, they’re bucolic. Having said that, Peter spends his entire life with a knife in his hand carving flesh (albeit pumpkin flesh, but flesh nonetheless). In fact, in the first sentence Peter is wishing he found rotting flesh more appealing. The question: Does Peter have a more sinister edge than it may appear, or am I just imaging that?

GB: You are not the first person to think that! The title and the opening line definitely give the impression that something darker is coming. I remember one person in my writing group thought the pumpkins were going to come alive and take revenge on the man who kept carving them up. Someone else expected Peter to drop dead in the middle of carving a pumpkin for his granddaughter (my writing group members are cheery folks, aren’t they?).

But honestly, there’s nothing sinister about Peter’s character. To him, a carving knife is like his paintbrush. Everything is as sweet and innocent as it appears, which is why I was surprised that so many readers responded to the story – I expected people to be disappointed that no zombies showed up, or let down by the fact that there were no bloody guts. Ordinarily, a story would never get away with being that “good.” I think with everything that’s been going on in the world–the shootings, the bombings, the natural disasters–maybe people just needed to take a break from all the darkness and read a story about a nice man with a special gift, who stays in his marriage and loves his grandchild.

FFC: I think you did a good job of pacing the story. It moves well through time. Peter’s entire life is presented. That’s not easy to do in such a short piece of flash fiction. Looking closely at what you’ve written, it seems one thing you did was begin a lot of the paragraphs with a time signature. One paragraph starts with “The next day,” the very next paragraph with “In the years that followed,” then “Peter was at college,” then “One night,” then “That winter,” and finally “Several decades and thousands of pumpkins later…”

These time signatures, I think, had the wonderful effect of keeping the story moving. In fact, the story literally skips along. Right to that wonderful last sentence. Your thoughts? How do you think you were able to get an entire life story in a such a short piece?

GB: Last year, I read an excellent story in Every Day Fiction called “26.” I was fascinated by how the author, Michael Peralta, managed to paint such a vivid picture of a character’s life in just a sprinkling of words. Mr. Peralta also did another neat trick in that story, but I won’t spoil it. Those who haven’t read it should go check it out for themselves (Go! Now! The Pumpkin Master commands you!).  That piece (and its author) inspired me to challenge myself and see if I could fit a whole life in a flash, even if I could never manage to do it as eloquently as he did.

For my story, I knew I wanted to focus on two particular moments in the character’s life – one that occurred early in his life, and one that took place in his later years. Covering the decades in-between those two moments was the tricky part. I tried to keep the time signatures you mentioned as varied as possible, so it was not the same exact phrase every time (e.g. “Two years later,” “Ten years later,” “Fifty years later”). I also remember lengthening a few of the paragraphs in the middle section to decrease the choppiness (thanks, Pamela!) and rewriting the proposal scene to include a line of dialogue, just to break up the long string of summary-type paragraphs. In the end, I think, as one reader mentioned, Peter’s life was very much like a fairytale.

FFC: Speaking of that last line, I think that is what really made this story. It’s a truly beautiful last line. There’s ambiguity in that line. I wondered, as I read it, if you were saying that the pumpkin or the little girl dancing was the most beautiful thing in the world? (I’m sure you meant both–even if you didn’t just say you did and we’ll all think you’re brilliant). I was taught in my MFA program to avoid melodrama, and that last sentence is certainly melodramatic–but it totally works. Talk about melodrama. Talk about the last line of a story.

GB: Melodrama? You mean you want me to talk about how I act when I get a rejection letter? Oh, you meant melodrama as it’s used in writing. Right. Gotcha. As writers, we are taught to show rather than tell, to give clues that let readers figure things out for themselves, instead of just laying everything out on the page. But I think it’s possible to go too far in that direction. I read a quote last year from a Creative Writing professor who said his students were trying so hard not to be obvious, that they ended up being subtle to the point of obscurity. This sentiment resonated with me because one of the most frequent critiques I get about my writing is that my hints are too subtle, that readers are not picking up on my intent. My initial draft of this story, which ended a bit differently and did not include the line you mentioned, got a similar reaction from early readers. So, I tried to make an ending that would resonate, rather than fall flat or confuse the reader. I still believe it’s better to show than tell, and I still think subtlety rocks, but I also think sometimes it’s okay to just come right out and say what you mean.

That said, there is a little room for interpretation in that last scene, isn’t there? I definitely thought of Katie as the “most beautiful creation,” but that phrase could certainly apply to the pumpkin as well – though by far his simplest carving, it did earn Peter the best reaction he’d ever gotten for one of his pieces. And there is also the question of why he didn’t get his usual “flash” of inspiration in the first place: Was it just a temporary glitch? Had his gift left him permanently? Or was the answer, as one of my group members suggested, in the last line itself: that Peter didn’t get a flash for his granddaughter because he could not outdo her beauty?

Last lines, in general, are pretty much the scariest ones to write (at least for me), because the success of the whole story is riding on those final few words. Just like the first line has to hook readers and draw them in, the last line must make readers feel like the journey they went on was worthwhile. That there was a point to the story. That they got something–a smile, a laugh, a scare, a new idea–out of the experience. I often rewrite my last lines more than once, trying to give them a little extra kick or clarity. Usually, I can tell by the readers’ reactions whether I’ve succeeded or failed!

FFC: Why “fractals and world-upside-down drawings by Escher?” In a past life I was a mathematician so I found this particular choice of yours brilliant. I loved it. But, tell me, why does Peter see these two particular things in his room? Do these two things have anything to do with the rest of the story or did these two things just happen to be hanging on the wall in the place that you wrote the story?

GB: Those were very specific choices, as was Peter’s taste in music. My logline for this story was: “A man who has always loved intricate patterns and elaborate designs discovers that the greatest beauty of all can lie in the simplest of moments.” So, the highly-detailed carvings, the very grand way Peter proposed, and even his wall decorations were all meant to have a certain level of complexity, in order to contrast with the simplicity of the final scene. In hindsight, I suppose I could have used the decorations on my wall, but somehow I don’t think Harry Potter and Superman posters would have quite fit the bill .

FFC: What are your plans from here? Tell us about any other writing work you may be doing. Brag about your website.

GB: Well, my main goal for the future would be to get my novel published. If I could only ever get one more piece of writing published, that would be it, no question. But seeing as I’m not quite ready to start submitting that to publishers yet, I’ll continue to write short stories (just finished a humor piece about a drunken unicorn) and I’ll also be posting various writing resources and tips on my new blog: http://astheheroflies.wordpress.com. I just came from an excellent writing workshop with children’s author Jean Alicia Elster, and am planning on attending several more workshops over the next few months, so I should have lots of useful tidbits to share!

FFC: Congratulations on your wonderful story. I really enjoyed it. Good luck in the future.

GB: Thank you so much! Also, many thanks to everyone who read “The Pumpkin Master” – I would never have had this opportunity without you.

by Erin Kelly

Some view fiction as a mental escape — the chance to disappear into another world which does not include all of our daily chores and obligations. Others relate to the realities that such a medium provides; an opportunity to use another person’s words to delve deeper into our souls and witness things we had not noticed before.  “Bulletproof“ by Divya Raghavan is just such a story: One that serves as an escape into an otherwise mundane life event of another person and causes us to reflect on our own life choices.

The story was voted by readers as Every Day Fiction‘s top story for November. Flash Fiction Chronicles recently interviewed Divya about her story and the motivations behind it.

FFC: What inspired this piece?

Raghavan: I wrote this piece for a fiction-writing class I was lucky enough to take with author Amy Hempel, so the piece has benefited incredibly from her and my classmates’ feedback.  I wanted to start a story with “riddle me this,” so I did, but in the writing process the story turned into something unexpected, and the first line didn’t fit anymore.  But the underlying theme is from a few friends’ experiences with dating, and observations I’ve made from trying to understand others’ situations.

FFC: What I found most interesting about this piece — and most works of great short fiction — is how it’s able to convey a range of emotional depth during an otherwise mundane life event. Some of the most extraordinary works of short fiction are set during ordinary daily life. What are your thoughts on how everyday life speaks to us and how it has spoken to your narrator here?

Raghavan: I think ordinary life is much more interesting than our extraordinary experiences.  The things that I end up repeatedly mulling over are always mundane life events, every day conversations, etc., rather than once-in-a-lifetime events.  In this story, I intended for this event from everyday life to serve as an indicator of how her everyday events tend to go, how she is repeatedly hiding things and giving up little parts of herself.

FFC: What do you find uniquely fulfilling about writing flash fiction?

Raghavan: Well, it’s always satisfying to finish something.  And people are much more willing to read your writing and give you feedback if it’s short.  But I am always surprised by the amount of characterization an author can fit into a short piece.  I love when you feel like you have created a full, three-dimensional character in so few words.

FFC:  What do you find uniquely challenging about it?

Raghavan: It’s tough to get a character to really resonate with readers in short fiction.  In longer pieces, it’s more likely that people reading it will find something in there that they can relate to.  There are plenty of books where I don’t like one scene, and flash fiction is just one scene.

FFC: A few of the readers pointed out that this piece has more telling than showing, which is typically a fiction-writing sin. Yet it works well in this piece. In your opinion, how would the story have changed if you’d have depicted the couple interacting? What makes the “telling” work in this piece, in your opinion?

Raghavan: I think the “telling” works because the piece is less about their actual interactions and more about how she interprets their interactions.  And I think that staying in her head the whole time allows readers to relate to her more than they would if it had been a third-person story.  I focused on the character more than the story itself, so it made sense to stay with the character the entire time.  But maybe it would have been more interesting if there had been more action.  I think those reading it would have felt less close to the narrator, though.

by Erin Kelly

“There are Those Who Have the Stars” is a flash fiction work of science fiction; one that is able to create another universe and aesthetic in only 650 words — a commendable feat. But it isn’t just the writing and skilled technique that makes this piece intriguing. It’s the underlying message(s) that the story conveys in such a short expanse of words. Readers of Every Day Fiction, where “There are Those Who Have the Stars” was rated as the top story for October, took many different viewpoints on John Eric Vona’s piece of flash.

Vona took a few moments to answer questions about this compelling top-rated work and his outlook on writing in general.

FFC: What do you find uniquely satisfying about writing science fiction?

Vona: Scifi is probably my first love. My earliest memory is of Ben Kenobi turning off the death star tractor beam. Writing it is a chance for me to do anything I want, go anywhere I want. The infinite wonder of the universe and all possibility stretches before me when I sit down to write a piece of science fiction. I have to say, though, for me, it’s always about bringing it back home. I have to take those possibilities and confront humanity with them. There’s so much conflict that lies in the space between all infinity and the smallness of a human being. Like in this story, the end result isn’t always something that fills you with warm fuzzies.

FFC:  What do you find uniquely satisfying about writing flash fiction?

Vona: From the perspective of a part time writer, flash is a way for me to have that rare sense of accomplishment. If writing a novel is building house, writing flash is like doing the dishes. It’ll be great when my novel is finally done. I’ve been working on it for two years and I think I could easily be working on it for two more. I can’t imagine the sense of accomplishment I’ll have when it’s finally complete and out there for the world to read. But flash gives me the will to keep going on a regular basis. It’s not going to make me any money or even reach a broad audience, but like the dishes, it feels damn good to just hunker down and get something done.

FFC: There were many interesting comments on EDF about your story. Some readers interpreted it as a statement about human trafficking, others said it was about society’s preoccupation with profit at any cost. My reading was different than both of those. I felt the piece was about cynicism versus hope. What were your thoughts on all these different takes?

Vona: Lately I’ve been discussing what art is with my tenth graders and the general consensus is that it can be anything evoking emotion and interpretation. I take these varying perspectives as a sign of the piece’s success. There’s a hint of all of that in there: human trafficking, cynicism, greed, you name it. I wouldn’t say there’s a statement about any one in particular, or even a statement at all. When I write, I’m not interested in preaching in any way. What I am interested in is putting something on display that can’t be captured in a sound bite. I’m driven to write by feelings and ideas that can be expressed no other way.

FFC: What do you feel the story is about?

Vona: Regret, maybe, from a character stand-point. I wanted to look at a man who sold his soul a long time ago and see what was left. I wanted the reader to step into his life, see what he’d given up goodness for and how he judged the exchange in retrospect. That perspective is important. It’s not always what we do in our life that makes us, but what we think about those things we’ve done.

It may also be of interest to some that I wrote this story after reading Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not.” I consider it a scifi-flash response.

FFC: What is your writing process when it comes to flash fiction?

Vona: Write it in one sitting, no matter what. Then forget about it. A month, two months, a year later, dredge it up out of the depths of your hard drive and tear it to shreds. Take what’s worth keeping and write it again. And again. And again until you’ve got something you almost can’t recognize as your own creation. Because it’s not. It was a group effort between you and all those other yous who worked on it over that period of time. And in that way, it becomes even truer to who you are because it’s not what the Monday-you or the springtime-you wrote. It’s something that transcends mood and disposition and whim. It’s more representative of you than you are on any given day.

FFC: What do you hope to achieve as a writer?

Vona: Fame, notoriety, power, wealth, life eternal…and a jet ski.

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John Eric Vona is a graduate of Florida State University’s prestigious Creative Writing program. He has been published in Crossed Genres, 365 Tomorrows, Every Day Fiction, and Thematic Literary Magazine. His blog about writing can be found here: http://www.blogiversity.org/blogs/dmi/default.aspx He currently resides in Tampa, Fl with his amazing wife, Mary, and teaches tenth grade English at Steinbrenner High School.

by Walter Giersbach

I’m afraid I kicked a hornet’s nest when I commented skeptically on a recent story in Every Day Fiction. My thrust was that women should be wary of writing from a male point of view, and vice versa. In the broadest sense, I tried to say, most male writers are hardwired to see flash fiction in terms of action, resolve, vindication and searching (to name a few objectives). Women are generally seeking to interpret relationships and write about closure, security, inter-personal associations and contacts.

I invited vituperation from this thesis and engendered a good discussion.

Is there such a thing as “women’s writing,” and what are the distinguishing characteristics? What are the determining factors of gendered textuality — the relation between the placement and meaning of words and the reader’s interpretation?

The deepest question is, Can a man write like a woman, and vice versa?

Historically, some writers have done an acceptable job of cross-gender authorship. Classics were written by Daniel Defoe (Moll Flanders in The Fortunate Mistress), John Cleland (Fanny Hill in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure), Charles Dickens (Esther Summerson in Bleak House) and Samuel Richardson (Pamela).

A second concern asks whether a person can completely identify with the opposite sex. This presupposes the writer thoroughly knows his or her character — motives, culture, environment, desires and fears, etc. — and is further able to project the unique way the opposite sex responds to situations.

The topic is fraught with cultural and political baggage. Feminist criticism in the 1970s emphasized the impossibility of a man imagining women’s experiences. Critics were also fearful of being preëmpted by males trying to portray certain “feminine” emotions and motives in our culture. Their fear was that women would continue to be marginalized in a patriarchal society. (African-American writers were also scornful of white writers attempting to limn the black experience, and arguments still rage over Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.)

For the writer insisting on “passing” as the opposite gender, or at least interpreting a story from that point of view, there are yardsticks to consider first: Purdue University’s syllabus on feminist literary criticism suggests we need to ask how the male and female roles are defined, what constitutes masculinity and femininity, how the characters embody these traits, and so on. Critically, the writer must eliminate any confusion between the author’s voice in the subject matter and subject’s voice.

Interestingly, there is a “Turing test” based on word-frequency usage by female or male writers. Gender Genie doesn’t predict as much as it provides broad indicators. The interactive site (at http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php) uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed to predict the gender of an author. The service allows you to paste text into a block; indicate whether it is fiction, non-fiction or a blog; and submit for immediate analysis.

I’ll be the first to recognize scientific studies aren’t conclusive. However, researchers at the Illinois Institute of Technology found “significant differences between male- and female-authored documents in the use of pronouns and certain types of noun modifiers. Although the total number of nominals used by male and female authors is virtually identical, females use many more pronouns and males use many more noun specifiers. More generally, even in formal writing, female writing exhibits greater usage of features identified by previous researchers as ‘involved’ while male writing exhibits greater usage of features which have been identified as ‘informational.’”

I’m sympathetic to “cross-gender” writing and have written flash from a woman’s POV when I felt the stories were best told by a woman in the third person, but I recognize the challenges of language and action cause complications. I only ask other flash fiction writers to examine these problems carefully before throwing a curve ball to readers.

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Walt Giersbach’s fiction has appeared in Bewildering Stories, Big Pulp, Corner Club Press, Every Day Fiction, Everyday Weirdness, Gumshoe Review, Lunch Hour Stories, Mouth Full of Bullets, Mystery Authors, OG Short Fiction, Northwoods Journal, Paradigm Journal, Pif Magazine, r.kv.r.y,  Short Fiction World, Southern Fried Weirdness, The Short Humour Site, The World of Myth and Written Word. He was 6^th place winner of the 79^th annual Writer’s Digest writing competition in October 2011.  Two volumes of short stories, Cruising the Green of Second Avenue, have been published by Wild Child. He served for three decades as director of communications for Fortune 500 companies, helped publicize the Connecticut Film Festival, managed publicity and programs for Western Connecticut State University’s Haas Library, and moderates a writing group in New Jersey.