Monthly Archives: April 2012

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by Tim VanSant

The #FridayFlash Report – Vol 3 Number 48

April 28, 2012 in FridayFlash Report by Tim VanSant

We had 58 stories in the Collector this week with 2 Debuts. Please welcome Fayne Riverdale and Wakefield Mahon to the community. The stories this week fall under 15 different genres, including one each in Crime, Experimental, Historical, Literary, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Romance, and Suspense. What a wonderfully diverse community we have!

We have only three stories this week with an unspecified genre. I know how difficult it can be sometimes to decide what genre fits a story best. Many of us don’t think about genre when we write — it’s more of a marketing term than a writing term — and I confess I’ve entered stories as unspecified a time or two. But genre is something that may draw readers to your work. And we all want to draw in more readers, don’t we? Unspecified will remain a choice, but we hope you’ll consider whether your story might be better served if you specify a genre.

As always, if your story is not in the listing below please go to the Collector and add the details. It will be in next week’s listing. ~Tim Read the rest of this entry →

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Avatar of Estrella Azul

by Estrella Azul

News Flash – Vol.3 #47

April 24, 2012 in Community News, News Flash by Estrella Azul

One of Linda Simoni-Wastila’s wee fictions has found a nest. “Mama Loves Birds” up at Blue Five Notebook.

The Best British Short Stories 2012, in which Dan Powell has a story included, was published at the beginning of this week. Dan’s local library will be buying in a copy and are asking their reading group about his doing a reading and/or some kind of writing workshop for them. Also, Dan’s story, “Peekaboo”, has been accepted for the imminent National Flash Fiction Day anthology Jawbreaker. Dan has been quite busy. He was interviewed by Nuala Ní Chonchúir regarding his writing over on Nuala’s blog Women Rule Writer.

After a six month break Mari Juniper is back to writing. Here is the article she wrote for #Amwriting.org, the important lessons she learned from her time away.

Tom Gillespie has signed a publishing deal with Crooked Cat Books and his new novel, “Painting by Numbers”, will be out later this year.

Eric J. Krause is having a release party for his young adult paranormal novel, “Ghost Betweens”. You can join in while it runs from April 24th until the 27th.

Congratulations to all!

~ Estrella Azul

 

Keep the good news coming! You can send in your news items concerning the Friday Flash community to Estrella at estrella.azul@fridayflash.org or by contacting her on Facebook or Twitter. Or feel free to share your news by posting on the#fridayflash Facebook Group Page.

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Avatar of Tim VanSant

by Tim VanSant

The #FridayFlash Report – Vol 3 Number 47

April 21, 2012 in FridayFlash Report by Tim VanSant

We had 55 stories in the Collector this week with 1 Debut. Please welcome Sasha to the community. The stories this week fall under 13 different genres, including one each in Action, Experimental, Paranormal, and Thriller. What a wonderfully diverse community we have!

The length of flash fiction makes for good reading when you’re on the go. Do you read #FridayFlash on a mobile device such as a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or smartphone? Would you be interested in some sort of FFDO app? Let us know in the comments.

As always, if your story is not in the listing below please go to the Collector and add the details. It will be in next week’s listing. ~Tim Read the rest of this entry →

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Avatar of Estrella Azul

by Estrella Azul

News Flash – Vol.3 #46

April 17, 2012 in Community News, News Flash by Estrella Azul

Jodi MacArthur interviewed script writer, film producer, and actress Yelena Sabel over at Pulp Metal Magazine.

Janel Gradowski has a flash fiction piece included in “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction”, which contains 88 short-short stories you can read in a single sitting. Janel seems to have been quite busy, as her flash fiction piece, “Soldier of Fortune”, has been the winner of December Mysterious Photo contest and is now included in the June issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Helen Howell’s story, “I AM”, has been accepted for the Blood Vengeance Vampyre contest on The Were Traveler.

Congrats to all!

~ Estrella Azul

 

Keep the good news coming! You can send in your news items concerning the Friday Flash community to Estrella at estrella.azul@fridayflash.org or by contacting her on Facebook or Twitter. Or feel free to share your news by posting on the#fridayflash Facebook Group Page.

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Avatar of Tim VanSant

by Tim VanSant

The #FridayFlash Report – Vol 3 Number 46

April 14, 2012 in FridayFlash Report by Tim VanSant

We had 52 stories in the Collector this week with 5 Debuts. Please welcome Jeffrey Hollar, Denis Doran, Jason Banks, Lena, and Mrs G to the community. The stories this week fall under 11 different genres including one each in Experimental, Magical Realism, Mystery, Paranormal, and Steampunk. What a wonderfully diverse community we have!

As always, if your story is not in the listing below please go to the Collector and add the details. It will be in next week’s listing. ~Tim Read the rest of this entry →

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by Guest Post

5 Quick Ways to Minimize Distractions and Get Writing

April 12, 2012 in Guest post, Thursday Writing by Guest Post

Today we have a guest post from Alexis MacDonald for your reading pleasure. Alexis is not a member of the #fridayflash community, but her excitement to write a guest post for us and the wonderful content she provided have quickly sealed the deal. I am pleased to present to you her article detailing 5 Quick Ways to Minimize Distractions and Get Writing. We are all writers here and let’s face it – we all need to read this advice, maybe even more than once.

~ Estrella Azul

 

5 Quick Ways to Minimize Distractions and Get Writing

There are times in our lives that no matter how diligent we are about setting aside private time to write, life insists on getting in the way. Here are a few tips to help writers roll with the metaphorical punches and get some words down!

1. Self-discipline

Make writing a habit. Write at the same time every day. Write throughout the day. Read a page about writing and then write a paragraph.

2. Disengagement

As writers, we do not need to be connected to others every minute of the day. We know that in order to focus, we need to disengage ourselves from our social life.

• Install a door. There are limits to what a door can do. In spite of their best intentions, family members tend to neglect to respect this impediment and will knock and open it anyway. But the door will diminish the recent movie rental or stereo playing in the family room.

• Telephones. Ring tones and vibrations are extremely distracting. If you have a mobile phone, arrange it so that it does not ring, a light merely flashes. Set it off to one side and in either case, merely glance at the caller ID and unless it is an emergency, ignore it. As long as someone else is at home who can answer it, do not answer the phone at your writing desk.

• The Social Internet. It should not have to be said that in order to better focus, a writer should be self-disciplined enough to have turned off all their social applications that would vie for attention. There are programs to download that help writer’s monitor their time and block out social sites but why would a disciplined writer resort to using these programs? On the other hand, having the Internet up is important for research.

3. Nutrition and hydration

It is important to be energetic yet be calm enough to focus. Did you know that the lack of calcium causes mental depression or that iodine is a mental energizer? Besides salt, iodine is found in peppers, kelp, and raw goat milk. Although coffee and alcohol are commonly connected to writers, water, green tea, and organic fruit juices help maintain hydration and energize the mind. There are also over-the-counter eye drops that help moisturize dry, weary eyeballs.

4. Music

Because writers are creative people, many are also musicians and artists. Some writers cannot work while listening to music with lyrics because they tend to concentrate on the lyrics while others who play instruments cannot listen to music at all. Some need white noise in the background in order to write. Be aware of this and use whatever helps you get the job done. Ear plugs can help but, some people strain to listen to the outside world even more when they use them.

 

If the above tips failed to help, this next one – while seemingly a detractor, might actually remedy the situation.

5. Be in a noisy, busy environment

Going to a place like a mall or a coffee shop where there are people and noise all around you can be freeing. There are times when an overly busy environment actually helps one block out individual distractions and concentrate better. Along those lines, being around other writers who are engaged in their writing can really get you cracking on your own project.

 

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About the author:

Alexis MacDonald is a stay at home mom, midnight scribbler and a freelance pregnancy writer. She answers questions such as “how do you get pregnant” (hint, it’s more complex than you think – for instance: there’s a fertility calendar…) :)

 

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Avatar of Estrella Azul

by Estrella Azul

News Flash – Vol.3 #45

April 10, 2012 in Community News, News Flash by Estrella Azul

Kevin J. Mackey’s fantasy story, “A Song of Danard”, was featured over at Short-Story.me last week.

Jodi Cleghorn has a story, “Intersected”, in the newly available second issue of Vine Leaves Literary Journal (on page 17).

Adam Byatt and Jodi Cleghorn are launching a collaborative project on 10 April called Post Marked: Piper’s Reach. They visited a few #FridayFlash participants on their pre-release Blog Tour. You can catch up on the tour and learn more about the project at their website, Post Marked: Piper’s Reach.

Rebecca Emin has the Facebook event up for the official launch of “When Dreams Come True”, her second novel, on 28 May.

Susan Helene Gottfried invites us all along for the release of “King Trevor”, the much-anticipated follow-up to “Trevor’s Song”, on April 12. Here are the Amazon and Smashwords links.

~~~

“Literary Mix Tapes” flashes turned into short films? You read that correctly. Here is the scoop on things, over at Write Anything.

Congratulations to all!

~ Estrella Azul

 

Keep the good news coming! You can send in your news items concerning the Friday Flash community to Estrella at estrella.azul@fridayflash.org or by contacting her on Facebook or Twitter. Or feel free to share your news by posting on the#fridayflash Facebook Group Page.

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Avatar of Tim VanSant

by Tim VanSant

The #FridayFlash Report – Vol 3 Number 45

April 7, 2012 in FridayFlash Report by Tim VanSant

We had 46 stories in the Collector this week with no Debuts. Some old friends that we haven’t seen for a while have entries this week. The stories this week fall under 11 different genres, including one each of Adventure, Cross-Genre, Historical, Literary, and Mystery. What a wonderfully diverse community we have!

There has been lots of terrific news in our weekly News Flash reports compiled by Estrella Azul. Keep sharing all the great links to publications, book launches, contests, markets for flash fiction, new gigs, etc. with your community. Estrella has contact info at the bottom of each News Flash.

As always, if your story is not in the listing below please go to the Collector and add the details. It will be in next week’s listing. ~Tim Read the rest of this entry →

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Avatar of Estrella Azul

by Estrella Azul

News Flash – Vol.3 #44

April 3, 2012 in Community News, News Flash by Estrella Azul

Nadine Maritz was interviewed at Real Vampire News, and offer us further insights into the literary figure that the “new” vampires have become. Congrats, Nadine!

John Wiswell’s newest podcast, “Consumed: Spoiled – Just don’t (Mass Effect) 3″ is available for listening and free download. This episode is all about BioWare’s controversial release of Mass Effect 3. Well done, John!

If you are looking for writing prompts, check out Maria Kelly’s here or Eric J. Krause’s here from their blogs. Thanks, Maria and Eric!

~~~

In case you missed it last week, here is some information Tim VanSant offered regarding our I write Friday Flash Badge page here on FFDO. We are pleased with the responses!

E.D. Johnson managed to write a wonderful, highly believable, article this past Sunday, which just so happened to be April 1st. For a laugh, go read BOFF 3 Submissions.

~~~

Now it is time for a quick reminder: I occasionally beg ask you guys on Twitter, FB and G+ to send in your own news items. That is because I am prone to miss some of your news items as life tends to happen (while holding down all three of my current jobs), and can get crazy busy sometimes. Please keep the good news coming in order for the NewsFlash to be filled with all of your wonderful achievements! It would help me out so much if you did so. You can send in your own, or even another #fridayflash member’s, news items concerning the Friday Flash community to me, Estrella, at estrella.azul@fridayflash.org or by contacting me on Facebook or Twitter. Or feel free to share your news by posting it on the#fridayflash Facebook Group Page. 

Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks!

~ Estrella Azul

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by E. D. Johnson

BOFF 3 Submissions

April 1, 2012 in Writing Fun by E. D. Johnson

Calendar

Calendar

I am aware that BOFF 2 is not out yet, but it has basically gone to print. In the interest of getting the ball rolling on BOFF 3, Jon has given me permission to go ahead and start collecting submissions for the next collection.

As an added bonus, Steven King (Yes, THE Steven King) has volunteered to write the introduction as a way of encouraging participation and growth among up and coming authors. But we need to act quickly before he gets distracted with other projects. In order to speed up the process a bit though, we have to switch away from the submishmash to a slightly more archaic form. We will collect comments with links to the stories here.

I already have a team of judges set and ready to unbiasedly forge through the flash fiction, so I am confident we can power through a gross in a week. But that means the window for submissions will be tiny: till the end of today!

So, if you want to be considered for BOFF 3, comment here and link to your story. Include your name and the genre you believe fits best as well. We want to have the submissions ready for the folks at eMergant as soon as they finish BOFF 2.

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