Last month I submitted a 500-word story to an up-and-coming horror magazine and publisher called Dark Chapter Press. Dark Chapter runs a monthly horror flash fiction contest with inspiration for stories derived from photographs featured on their website. The August competition featured a photograph of creepy doll parts and it can be found here. I'm very excited to say that the story I submitted - Where the Toys Go - was selected as one of the runner-ups in the competition! They are featuring my story this week on their blog. Please click on the link below to read my story and the submissions of the other winners! There are also other horror stories featured on their website if you enjoy being scared. Horror writing is a new genre for me but I have to admit I am having a lot of fun with it. Enjoy!
Story: Where the Toys Go
Monday, September 22, 2014
Thursday, September 18, 2014
What is Flash Fiction?
I discovered flash fiction in the back page of the scientific journal Nature. Nature: Futures runs a new, flash sci-fi story every week and the call for submissions asks for provocative stories that are <950 total words in length. Many, many other online magazines and publications are now publishing stories that are <1,000 words. Daily Science Fiction will even email you (for free!...so sign up...do it now) a new flash fiction story every morning. The editors at the magazine encourage readers to take three or four minutes to enjoy a new story with breakfast, or during lunch, or in bed, or whenever and wherever else you decide to read and enjoy such things in life.
In essence, flash fiction is story-telling on a microscopic scale. It poses several different types of challenges both to the reader and the writer and I have come to really enjoy it as a form of literature and entertainment. I would say that most flash fiction stories are <1,000 words in length, on average. But I have read stories that are even shorter, as small as 500 or even 100 total words. There is no universal set length for a flash fiction story...but it should be short. The advantage truly is being able to escape to another world in the time it takes to have a cup of tea or coffee in the morning...or even on the bus on the way to work.
For the reader this can be challenging on several levels. I enjoy reading detailed descriptions of setting and mood and I like to slowly sink into the story and get to know the characters. Flash fiction stories will usually set the tone and atmosphere almost immediately - some even begin in the middle of conversations and the reader is delightfully tossed right into a predicament. The reader often needs to play catch-up and sometimes will just have to accept that some aspects of the story's world will go unexplained. This forces the reader to get out of their comfort zone and engage with the plot immediately due to the story's brevity. It's refreshing in way. Of course, for those of us with short attention spans, it is not surprising flash fiction is taking off as a popular form of story-telling. In today's day and age most people don't even read a full newspaper article any more, let alone a short story or novel.
For a writer there are challenges as well. How do you tell a gripping or entertaining story in such a short span? One thousand words sounds like a lot but it is nothing more than two pages, double-spaced. That is not a lot of room to develop the relationship between the protagonist and the problem, or between two characters, or to describe the ending of the world. I think it is good practice for writers to attempt this format at least once, however, because it forces one to really examine what is essential to a story and how it can be pruned to hone in on the message.
If you are interested in science fiction like I am, make your way over to Nature: Futures or Daily Science Fiction or just Google 'flash science fiction' and see what you find! Most magazines keep an archive of previous stories free for you to peruse at your own leisure.
In essence, flash fiction is story-telling on a microscopic scale. It poses several different types of challenges both to the reader and the writer and I have come to really enjoy it as a form of literature and entertainment. I would say that most flash fiction stories are <1,000 words in length, on average. But I have read stories that are even shorter, as small as 500 or even 100 total words. There is no universal set length for a flash fiction story...but it should be short. The advantage truly is being able to escape to another world in the time it takes to have a cup of tea or coffee in the morning...or even on the bus on the way to work.
For the reader this can be challenging on several levels. I enjoy reading detailed descriptions of setting and mood and I like to slowly sink into the story and get to know the characters. Flash fiction stories will usually set the tone and atmosphere almost immediately - some even begin in the middle of conversations and the reader is delightfully tossed right into a predicament. The reader often needs to play catch-up and sometimes will just have to accept that some aspects of the story's world will go unexplained. This forces the reader to get out of their comfort zone and engage with the plot immediately due to the story's brevity. It's refreshing in way. Of course, for those of us with short attention spans, it is not surprising flash fiction is taking off as a popular form of story-telling. In today's day and age most people don't even read a full newspaper article any more, let alone a short story or novel.
For a writer there are challenges as well. How do you tell a gripping or entertaining story in such a short span? One thousand words sounds like a lot but it is nothing more than two pages, double-spaced. That is not a lot of room to develop the relationship between the protagonist and the problem, or between two characters, or to describe the ending of the world. I think it is good practice for writers to attempt this format at least once, however, because it forces one to really examine what is essential to a story and how it can be pruned to hone in on the message.
If you are interested in science fiction like I am, make your way over to Nature: Futures or Daily Science Fiction or just Google 'flash science fiction' and see what you find! Most magazines keep an archive of previous stories free for you to peruse at your own leisure.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
My First Story - One Day in the Future
The first short story I wrote and officially published was called One Day in the Future. It's a fun story (I think) and it can be found here. I submitted it to a 'flash' science fiction competition called Quantum Shorts. The submissions were judged for their quality, etc. and the stories had to involve something related to, or derived from, quantum mechanics. It was an open-voting competition so everyone's stories were published online for all to see. I didn't win but I considered resubmitting the story elsewhere for publication because I like it.
This was when I decided to actually read the rules in fine print for the Quantum Shorts competition.and stumbled upon this:
" and (e) by providing a Submission, entrant consents to give Organizer a non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, create derivative works from, and display such Submission under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" Source.
My story is now shared under a broad licensing agreement, which the host's of the competition own. Unfortunately, this means submitting the story elsewhere to be published has strings attached to it and is hardly likely to be purchased. Thus, my story is now published in my opinion...at least in spirit. So I hope you enjoy it! And as a side note, I've now come to learn from reading the fine print of many other competitions and magazines that most won't take a submission that is already freely found on the web, or that is currently under consideration with another publisher. So in retrospect I wouldn't have been able to publish this story anyway (assuming the story had been accepted elsewhere).
I consider that a penny saved, if not necessarily earned.
This was when I decided to actually read the rules in fine print for the Quantum Shorts competition.and stumbled upon this:
" and (e) by providing a Submission, entrant consents to give Organizer a non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, create derivative works from, and display such Submission under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" Source.
My story is now shared under a broad licensing agreement, which the host's of the competition own. Unfortunately, this means submitting the story elsewhere to be published has strings attached to it and is hardly likely to be purchased. Thus, my story is now published in my opinion...at least in spirit. So I hope you enjoy it! And as a side note, I've now come to learn from reading the fine print of many other competitions and magazines that most won't take a submission that is already freely found on the web, or that is currently under consideration with another publisher. So in retrospect I wouldn't have been able to publish this story anyway (assuming the story had been accepted elsewhere).
I consider that a penny saved, if not necessarily earned.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
A Fresh Page
It's been a long time since I've attempted to blog. Most of my efforts the past year and a half have been focused on finishing up graduate school, finding a job, and working on various projects here and there. But I feel it is time to start blogging again.
There are several reasons for this, including the shameless self-promotion of anything that I will hopefully publish. But I also want to write about the journey as I develop as a writer and hopefully this platform will interest me and....who knows, maybe somebody else.
A little bit about me: during the day I am a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health. I research genetic causes of essential hypertension and the genetic changes that occur within our bodies as we age.
But at night I am an adventurer, a space captain, and the lone survivor of a forgotten war! Not really. But I like to write about those things and I hope they will entertain others someday. This blog will archive my success and failure at honing my craft and serve as a nice little soapbox to brag every now and then. I live mainly in the realms of science fiction and fantasy but I've tried some other fiction and we'll see how it goes.
I would also appreciate and love any input you may have. Tell me if you liked my stories, or hated them, or share something interesting you have read lately! Feel free to comment here or email me at any time, theripplesintime@gmail.com.
There are several reasons for this, including the shameless self-promotion of anything that I will hopefully publish. But I also want to write about the journey as I develop as a writer and hopefully this platform will interest me and....who knows, maybe somebody else.
A little bit about me: during the day I am a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health. I research genetic causes of essential hypertension and the genetic changes that occur within our bodies as we age.
But at night I am an adventurer, a space captain, and the lone survivor of a forgotten war! Not really. But I like to write about those things and I hope they will entertain others someday. This blog will archive my success and failure at honing my craft and serve as a nice little soapbox to brag every now and then. I live mainly in the realms of science fiction and fantasy but I've tried some other fiction and we'll see how it goes.
I would also appreciate and love any input you may have. Tell me if you liked my stories, or hated them, or share something interesting you have read lately! Feel free to comment here or email me at any time, theripplesintime@gmail.com.
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