News Flash – Vol.3 #46

Community News, News Flash No Responses »
Apr 172012

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.

Posted by Estrella Azul at 9:25 am

The #FridayFlash Report – Vol 3 Number 46

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Apr 142012

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 Continue reading »

Posted by Tim VanSant at 2:40 pm

5 Quick Ways to Minimize Distractions and Get Writing

Guest post 3 Responses »
Apr 122012

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…) :)

 

Posted by Estrella Azul at 12:21 pm

News Flash – Vol.3 #45

Community News, News Flash 2 Responses »
Apr 102012

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.

Posted by Estrella Azul at 8:49 am

The #FridayFlash Report – Vol 3 Number 45

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Apr 072012

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 Continue reading »

Posted by Tim VanSant at 1:59 pm

News Flash – Vol.3 #44

Community News, News Flash 2 Responses »
Apr 032012

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

Posted by Estrella Azul at 10:16 am

BOFF 3 Submissions

Uncategorized 13 Responses »
Apr 012012
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.

Posted by E. D. Johnson at 12:08 am

The #FridayFlash Report – Vol 3 Number 44

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Mar 312012

We had 43 stories in the Collector this week with 1 Debut. Please welcome Daragh Beirne to the community. The stories this week fall under 13 different genres including one each in Experimental, Mystery, Paranormal, and Romance. What a wonderfully diverse community we have!

Make sure you check out our updated I Write #FridayFlash Badge page. And if you participate at all in our little weekly exercise, please consider putting a badge on your blog or personal website.

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 Continue reading »

Posted by Tim VanSant at 1:41 pm

My Name is Friday. I Carry a Badge.

Community News, How-To, Tech 7 Responses »
Mar 292012

I Write #FridayFlash BadgeYou’ve probably seen this badge around as you visit sites reading #FridayFlash. When our editor, E. D. Johnson, instituted the program last summer it was always our intention to streamline the process. We’re making some steps in that direction. Today we are unveiling our new and improved I Write #FridayFlash Badge page. This page has two significant improvements over the old version: the list of authors is sortable and searchable and you can add yourself to the list.

Participating Authors

The list of participating authors is now in a table that you can sort by genre or author’s name just by clicking on the heading at the top of the column. Clicking again reverses the order. You can then shift-click another column heading to sort the results. And what I think is the best feature is the search function. Start to type a word in the search box and all the columns are dynamically filtered. So, for example, if you’re in the mood for something funny you could type humor in the search box and see only those authors who have that listed. Want to know who writes funny and scary? Just leave a space and enter another search term like horror and you’ll find there are a few authors in our community who list both.

As much as I love this improvement, it did come at a cost. On the old page, you could click the author’s name to go to their website. I’ve had a devil of a time trying to get that to work in the new format. I’ll keep working on it and plan to add that in later. In the meantime, if anyone has experience with jQuery Datatables on a WordPress site, I could use some technical assistance. BTW, we’re working on a similar table for listing #FridayFlash stories. We hope to have that ready later this year.

Add Your Name to the List

On the old page you had to leave a comment when you had the badge in place on your site and then E.D. or someone on our tech team had to edit our page to add you to the list. Now we have a form similar to the one we use for the Collector and you can add yourself. And, like the Collector, if you are a member here at FFDO I set it up to read your Name, Email address, and Website address from your profile to save you a few seconds filling in the form. There was a slight trade-off here too. The genres listed are the same as those on the Collector (except there’s no “Unspecified” category here, it’s just blank instead). I did recently add a few genres to the Collector to match some of the choices you made, but I didn’t add them all. It’s something of a balancing act to provide a comprehensive selection that is still manageable in size. We are, of course, open to suggestions for amending the list. Let us know in the comments how we can improve it.

If I made a mistake in transferring your information into the new table or if you want to change it for any reason (for example if you get a new web address or you want to change genres or the order of your genres) use the form to enter the new information. When I see a duplicate name, I’ll assume the new entry is correct and delete the old entry. (Only one listing will be provided for each author with up to three genres.) Also you should know that when I updated the list I looked for the badge displayed and linked correctly at the address listed. There were a couple sites that no longer exist and a few that apparently no longer display the badge, so I removed them from the list. If the link was not correct, I sent you an email requesting that you update your site. (Instructions are on the badge page. Let us know if you need technical assistance. The correct URL is http://fridayflash.org/press/badges/i-write-fridayflash-badge/)

Oh, and if you participate in #FridayFlash and have your own blog or website but you don’t have a badge yet, go get one now!

Posted by Tim VanSant at 12:07 am

News Flash – Vol.3 #43

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Mar 272012

Jodi Macarthur’s flash, “Tap”, has a place in the 9 Days of Madness over at The Leaky Pencil.

Featured at Bibliophilic Blather was  “Precious Sleep”, Janel Gradowski’s #fridayflash for last week.

Virginia Moffatt’s flash fiction piece, “Following the Real Miss Piggy”, is being published in a pamphlet to accompany the Manchester based Blank Media Collective’s “Inside” art exhibition.

On the Bookbag website, Marc Nash was interviewed about his writing.

Congratulations to all!

~~~

Tim Van Sant has some news regarding the “I write#FridayFlash” badge page here on FFDO. Expect that in a full post on Thursday.

~ 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.

Posted by Estrella Azul at 9:41 am
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