“This is great,” Jack said, lying down in the fine white sand and staring off at the sunset. I’m happy we’re here.” Ava stared at him in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? It’s going to be dark in less than an hour and we have no idea where we’re going to sleep tonight, much less…
Category: Writing
Reflections on This 20 Minutes a Day Writing Process
I have to admit that writing for 20 minutes a day – which ends up being around 40 once I edit – and then publishing on this blog has not been exactly like gobbling down a piece of moist chocolate cake with lots of butter cream frosting on top. (Can you tell I’m hungry?) No,…
A Trip Home
After Cecilia knocked on the front door of her childhood home and waited for the people who had lived there now twenty years to answer, she reached out and touched the stucco wall next to the door. It was the same beige that it had been when she was a girl and was rough to…
A Surreal Encounter
“Joy” “What’s that?” Joy Matthews looked up from her desk at her office mate, Connie Clements. “Very funny.” Joy knew that Connie didn’t actually think she was funny. She was the most unfunny person she knew – bordering on morose – and her name was some cosmic joke, poking endless fun at the discrepancy. Her…
Halloween in WeHo
Today is Halloween. Four hundred thousand people will descend on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, beginning at around 5:30 or 6 pm. We live exactly four blocks from where all the merrymaking will take place, and traffic in front of our house promises to slow to a crawl by mid-afternoon. We’ll see all sorts…
Great Article Explaining What Flash Is and Where to Submit Your Work
Flash What? A Quick Look at Flash Fiction by Jason Gurley If you’re anything like me — the traditional short story writer — then perhaps you’ve had the same reaction I exhibited when I first heard of something called “flash fiction.” I stopped, stared, then turned to a writer friend of mine and said, “What?” Flash…
Prompt: Sunset Boulevard
He was standing on the corner when she saw him as she was heading back to work. Not a tall man, he had an air of authority about him that suggested that he was comfortable in life, perhaps living out in the suburbs in a gated community where all the houses matched with variation coming…
Prompt: Stock Ticker
“This isn’t the way it was supposed to be.” That’s all Adam Burlingham could say when City of London police, acting on a directive from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, came in and shut down his brokerage firm. “Be careful, you oafs,” he shouted as two men grabbed the antique stock ticker, the one his…
Helpful Article on How to Write Flash – Pieces 300 – 1000 Words
Writing Flash Fiction By G. W. Thomas With the advent of the Internet, editors are looking for shorter works, more easily read on a computer screen. The current term is “flash fiction”, a tale between 300-1000 words long. Longer than micro-fiction (10-300 words) but shorter than traditional short stories (3000-5000 words preferred by most magazines),…
