Category: Friday Flash Fiction

When ’Nathan posted this picture last week for his Friday Flash Fiction piece (which you should go read), it brought to mind something I wrote about four years ago. At least, I think it was four years. My memory is not what it was.

(Narrator: his memory was never good.)

I wrote a half-finished draft of a novel based on some conversations and some letters with a wonderful woman I met while in graduate school, a retired lady who had this antique desk with a secret drawer full of letters. She showed me the letters and let me make copies of them and said, “Maybe you can find a story in them.”

How often does someone just give you a story like that? Her generosity is still humbling to me. And makes me a little ashamed that I haven’t picked up that manuscript since 2016.

But that’s another story. There’s a scene in the manuscript about one of the main characters, Evan, whose mother has recently died (what is it with me and dying mothers? I have no idea) and who is trying to reconcile with his estranged sister. Evan’s a painter, but he works in an art supply store to get by and sucks at dating. A friend of his makes him sign up for a dating app and, well, here’s how one encounter ends. Continue reading “Friday Flash Fiction: The Sketch Artist”

One of the things I like about short stories—or any fiction, really—is imagining the lives of the characters beyond the last page. If the story continued, what would they do next?

When it’s my own story, I can answer that question fairly easily: write more!

And that’s what this bit of flash fiction is. Back in 2012 I wrote a story called “Scorned,” which appeared in an anthology called The Lavender Menace: Tales of Queer Villainy.It ended with a new beginning of sorts for the main character, Marcus, who goes by the name Megawatt because he has a (deadly) way with electricity.

So when ’Nathan posted the photo below for a recent Friday Flash Fiction, it led him to revisit his story in that anthology as well. In my case, flames are not the same as electricity, but close enough.

This story also contains a passing nod to a character in an unpublished story, one that I never sent out because I wasn’t sure where to send it. In the same way that villains are fun to write, sidekicks frequently deserve more exploration, and combining worlds from different stories and books is so much fun for me as a writer, and as a reader.

I might send that story out to my mailing list, so go sign up, yo. Meanwhile, read on and enjoy.

Continue reading “A Simpler Plan (Friday Flash Fiction)”

So last Friday my friend ’Nathan posted a flash fic piece in response to the photo below. I thought it was adorable, both his story and the photo. See for yourself:

And I figured I’d see if I could come up with something by today to post, and what do you know, I did. It’s rough, but I hope you enjoy it just the same.

Continue reading “Friday Flash Fic: The Passenger”

So, I deleted my Facebook account this week.

Not my Facebook page, where I talk about all things writing related,  but rather my personal account. The news about the social network’s data (mis)management didn’t make me want to trust them with any more of my personal information than I have to.  But, that also means I no longer have access to the Friday Flash Fics group where I was getting all these photo prompts. (To be honest, that group was one of the few reasons I’d remained for as long as I did.) I’ll try to keep up with them all the same, though I might wind up being a week behind.

Details, details.

That being said, here’s the last photo prompt I was privy to:

And what a photo it is!

Continue reading “Friday Flash Fiction: A Beautiful Disguise”

For this week’s installment of Friday Flash Fics, we’re back to the story that I revisited most recently in the post titled An Unlikely Suspect.

Anyway, the photo prompt is certainly… interesting.

Granted, I don’t mean “interesting” in the same way as (ahem) some other photo prompts (if you scroll through the previous posts you’ll see what I mean). But it’s definitely an odd one, huh? It got me thinking about the character we met in the last installment, who was also kind of odd. Without further ado…

Continue reading “Friday Flash Fiction: A Room with a View”

This week’s Friday Flash Fics photo prompt reminded me of Philip and Joel from Detours:

Nice, yeah? It made me wonder what happened after Joel moved to England so he and Philip could be together. Let’s find out, shall we? Continue reading “Friday Flash Fiction: The Seacoast”

Again, this week’s Friday Flash Fiction entry is a continuation of last week’s story. And it’s getting to the stage where I’ll probably have to pause and figure out where it’s going before I continue. This is a common occurrence in my writing process: I write for a while with no particular idea of where a given story is going. Then, once I find it maintains my interest, I pause and map it out.

Anyway, here’s this week’s photo prompt:

Continue reading “Friday Flash Fiction: An Unlikely Suspect”

After last week’s Friday Flash Fiction, I decided that this week I wanted to write one that would continue where that story left off, more or less.

I’m not gonna lie, the photo prompt made that a challenge:

Continue reading “Friday Flash Fiction: Person of Interest”

So, for this week’s Friday Flash Fics prompt, you might wonder: Who could look at a photo like this and immediately think “murder”?

This guy, that’s who. Continue reading “Friday Flash Fiction: The Digital Corpse”