Category: Short Fiction

Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Paraffin Lamp by Alex Sinclair

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This story has content that some readers may find distressing.

Under normal circumstances, a tale of a violent, animal abusing prick wouldn’t get far with me. But Alex Sinclair is not the usual writer; nor is Paraffin Lamp a usual story. Alex has the tremendous ability to bring forward the least appealing elements in a character and make them interesting and alive. It lies in his effortless mastery of the language and perfect ear for dialogue.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 430 – Dear Food Balancing The Books, Mick Bloor / Mason Yates And *’I Smell A Watering Hole’

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We’ve been really busy this week.

I reckon we had close to sixty submissions and most of them were at the back end of the week.

We’re more or less caught up, maybe with a few stragglers.

It’s been good. But it always seems to happen when we have someone on holiday, and in my case, trying to get two rooms ready for the decorator coming tomorrow!

It’s been fun though – Well not the wallpaper stripping. I’m not the smallest of people and have two arthritic knees so trying to squeeze behind a cooker ain’t much fun.

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Short Fiction

Week 429: More Awful Truth; Five Human Works and Beware of the Tippleganger

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More Awful Truth

When I was young and inexperienced in the fine art of self destruction, I believed that getting a book in print made you both famous and rich. Boiled down to its elemental flaw, this belief was based on the notion that writing a book good enough to land in the small library in Port Orchard, Washington (as unlikely a candidate to supplant The Great Library of Alexandria imaginable) must mean you are famous–ergo rich–for I assumed you could not be one without the other.

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Week 428: Spring Cleaning; the Week That Is; Ten Names For the Inhabitants in the Box Behind the Stairs

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In Just Spring

The American Pacific Northwest is similar in climate to the UK. Both are just about as north as the other and both are close to an ocean. My home in the Puget Sound region is typical of the kind of weather found in such latitudes. We get twenty, sometimes thirty spring days spread over the course of four months. Seldom more than two in a row.

When it does come, everything gets all warm and cheery. People appear ready to spontaneously break out in song, smiles are unforced, and birds often garnish people with necklaces made from wildflowers, just like Snow White.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

Fifteenth Year by Jessica Cull

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I had been bleeding one year. Was told that made me a woman, but didn’t feel like one. Felt still small, my baby hair still soft. Light wisps on ice cream skin. Like the fluff of a wolf pup before it turns wiry in the winter, shedding its youth as its softness falls away. Maybe that was my bleeding. Maybe my softness was leaving me, replaced by black-red oozing and inside bruising.

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Week 427 – A Sir For Starters, No Bunting On My House And No Matter How Many Times That Dirge Is Changed, It Will Always Be Pure Shite. (A FUCKING HUNDRED MILLION QUID – ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?)

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There is no way that I’ll be watching the TV today. Nope! My Amazon music list will be playing all day. I have over three hundred songs on it, so that should see me through.

There’ll be no newspapers read by me until at least next Monday.

What I’m trying to say is that the celebrations do not apply to me and I’d rather chew off a testicle than pander to the sycophantic hoorah for the paedos’ brother.

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Week 426 -Protective Sports-Wear For Those Who Need It, Erika The Legend And An Eye-Witness Account.

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Another week to be rounded up.

We are now at number 426.

Let’s start with a question.

If you submit your work to a site/publisher /whoever, would you rather that they were drunk whilst reading?

If I threw in a ‘You would be guaranteed an acceptance’, would that change your answer?

And if I throw in a further, you’d receive a payment, does that make any difference?

Let’s find out those with principles and the other sensible folks!!

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425: Plotting, The Week in Love and Derivative Devices

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The Plot is in the Mail

The concept of plotting a story is alien to me. I’m as able to plot as I am able to dunk a basketball. Personally speaking, I, at best, have only the fuzziest idea of how something I work on ends. Nine times out of ten it doesn’t end that way, but is an ending directed by wherever the flow of the thing takes me.

The problem I have with plotting is it appears to be a blueprint for creativity, not far from the formula romance writers follow. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back and they both live nakedly ever after. Inaccurately, or otherwise, I see a difference between story and plot. I see stories unfolding in a natural manner with interesting things and interesting people meeting up–all left open for happy surprises that the author was unaware of until the composition began. And plotting as something on par with paint by numbers.

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Week 424 – Post-it’s, 100 Fucking Million (Watch this space) And Let’s Give Mr Kluger A Nod To One Over The Forty Nine!

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I decided to clear out my desk today. There is a problem as I have so many notes scribbled down for whatever reasons. At the time of writing them, I thought that they were the beginnings of some of the greatest ideas in the world, now that I look at them I think, ‘What the fuck was I on?’ I will type out the shite that I’m looking at:

‘Tuna and seaweed (All eaten)’ – I haven’t a fucking clue what was going on there!!!

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Short Fiction

Week 423: Tributes, An Easter Eve Recap, and the Book or the Film?

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A Weird Al Tribute Band Will Herald the End of Days

I do not know if it began with Elvis Impersonators or the Beatles, but I’ve noticed that there is a big business devoted to “tribute bands.” All the major groups have at least one, some have many. The Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin, the Supremes and so on. And some are better at doing the songs than the original artist. The name of a tribute band is usually a song or a phrase associated with the adored object; stuff like “We Will Rock You” and “The Song Remains the Same.” The only difference I see between a tribute band and a cover band is the singular focus of the former.

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