During his interview, Eric remarked that “We are changed (refined) by the events and people we encounter in our lives,” a statement which sits in both his heart and his writing. He approached this anthology because he has known many friends and some family with memory loss. The anthology’s vision to provide stories “where the story ended while the reader could still remember how it began,” appealed to him.
His story, Refining Fire follows a man assigned to assassinate a target, but when he finally sees the target’s eyes through his riflescope, his character feels conflicted. The story came about through a series of 'firsts'—first assignment, first week, first class in an MA program at California State Los Angeles. “Write two pages,” he was told, “in which your character encountered evil for the first time.” Eric’s been busy completing his MFA thesis at the University of Texas El Paso. He’s written a novel, Black Works, about a used-up bull rider who befriends a young girl and teaches her about horses, riding, roping, a rodeo and all the while seeking to reclaim a part of his life that was lost. In his ‘spare time,’ Eric serves as a principal at an alternative high school and also teaches at a community college in the evenings. He states that “procrastination and fear” are his greatest challenges as a writer, but perhaps his full plate might be greater. Stay in touch with Eric and his writing by way of his blog: ericluthi.com If you'd like to read the rest of Refining Fire, check out the book: bit.ly/READFLASH
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Jessica Jones deftly weaves threads of reality with fantasy in her flash fiction, The Williams Sisters and the Curios Incident. Drawn from the real life of her grandma and aunt when they were children living in Wales, she imagined a fantastical adventure the two girls might have had down to the detail of her great-grandma taking in lodgers. Mixing the real with the imagined comes as no surprise since Jessica loves “science fiction, adventure, magic and those sorts of books,” although she admits the short word count was challenging.
Jessica has faced countless challenges in her young life. She and her mum have been coping with her grandma’s Alzheimer’s for six years and to have her first story in a print publication caught her interest — “I wanted to be a part of it, for her, for who she used to be.” Though the anthology is her first print publication, she’s had several essays published online, most notably in The Huffington Post UK including one about her grandma — “How Alzhiemer’s Affected Three Generations,” and another somber piece about her younger brother who had been tragically killed in a car crash, “Please Don’t Tell Me Its Time to Move On From the Death of My Brother.” Jessica invests much of her energy writing her blog, Infertility and Life, where she hopes to raise awareness about infertility and offer support to others. She volunteers for Fertility Network UK and runs an online support group for people challenged by infertility who live in the Leicestershire area in the United Kingdom where she resides. . As you can imagine finding time to write sometimes proves difficult, but Jessica perseveres. Her current project includes a memoir that begins the night of her brother’s car crash, the court case to convict the other driver, and her and her husband’s battle to conceive a child. Want to read the rest of Jessica’s story? Check out the book: bit.ly/READFLASH.html If you’d like stay in touch with Jessica, read her blog here: https://infertilityandlife.wordpress.com/ Gita Smith’s friends call a region of her brain “The Mound,” a place where her stories rise and take shape. She’s a longtime writer and reader of flash fiction, as anyone reading her two pieces, Roadside Attraction, and You Only Get One Question can clearly tell. Her two stories couldn’t be more different from each other in voice and plot, yet both explore how the men in women’s lives are less than perfect.
A former reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gita is a founding member of House of Writers, an international flash fiction group. She urges other writers to “create or join a writing group and nourish each other.” When she isn’t writing, she reads submissions for Easy Street and hosts readings of new work by Alabama writers. In 2013, her story, The Tractor Thief’s Jacket, was named Best Short Story on the Web. When she read it aloud to friends their reaction was pure horror – “perfect for a truly dark crime story.” Despite her achievements, Gita finds writing third drafts her greatest challenge. She writes, “I wish I could hand my second drafts to a bot and say, ‘Fix everything that needs improving, okay?’” She’s recently completed a long story, Dining with the Homeless, so please nudge her to submit so the rest of us can read it. If you’d like to finish reading her story, Roadside Attraction, check out the anthology on Amazon: bit.ly/READFLASH. Karen Thrower read the anthology’s Call for Submissions on Facebook and recalls thinking — What a nice thing to do for people who think they can’t read anymore! Everyone should be able to experience the joy of reading and bringing that back for those who gave up on reading due to their memory issues, was something I wanted to do.
A life-long writer, Karen only recently began submitting stories for publication. She typically writes horror and fantasy so she challenged herself with writing something that was “family friendly, short and something that could evoke emotion in the reader.” In Bingo!, she spins a story about a young man who discovers an old airplane model kit that he and his father started when he was a boy. He remembers thinking they’ll finish it later, but they never do. After his dad passes, he’s going through his things in his garage and finds this box and decides to finish the plane. Though the story itself isn’t fantasy, her writing process seems to be. She describes writing her piece as if she “was standing behind this young man and watching him build this old plane and smelling the glue he was using.” Karen, a native Oklahoman, wife, and mother to a rambunctious four-year old, currently serves as the president of the Oklahoma Science Fiction, a writing group in which she’s been a member for four years. Early this morning, News Anchor, LeAnne Taylor, interviewed Karen on the News On 6. Click here to watch her interview! Karen’s been busy since she first started submitting stories. In recent weeks, the Siren’s Call Ezine, Issue #37, published her story, New Pet, an accomplishment she’s especially proud of achieving since the issue is an all-women horror issue. “It’s awesome to be included in such a group of outstanding women writers,” Karen says. She also has a new short story, The Lost Ones, coming out in the anthology, Secret Stairs. The editors received more submissions for this anthology than all their other anthologies combined. If you’d like to read the rest of her story, here’s the link to the anthology: bit.ly/READFLASH And if you want to read more of Karen’s writing, check out her Amazon Author’s page. Thank you, Karen, for taping into your fantasy and sending us Bingo! Like several of the stories in Flash Fiction for Flash Memory, Elizabeth Burton’s, An Unlikely Friend, erodes misconceptions people often hold about those who are not like themselves. In her story, an elderly woman is disappointed when a young, pink-haired woman moves into the house across the street because she'd hoped for a neighbor more like herself. But when disaster strikes, she finds her assumptions may have been wrong.
Elizabeth wants her readers to “be open to those who are placed in your life, even if they don’t meet your preconceived notions about what constitutes a friend, neighbor, or even a family member.” Her inspiration for the story? “I’ve had a number of unlikely friendships in my life and I wanted to honor them. The characters basically came to life on their own.” When asked what challenges her in her writing life, she admits a common complaint among writers: “…telling a good story. I firmly believe that what makes writing memorable in the long run is not merely beautiful language but also a beautiful story. That story can be gruesome or ugly, but if it's a good story, it will have beauty.” Elizabeth lives in Kentucky and graduated with an MFA in Fiction from Spalding University, She gives credit to her husband, Joe, as the most encouraging person in her writing life. She also acknowledges the wonderful writing tribe she found during her MFA program where everyone, “from the instructors to her fellow students” gave her inspiration. She’s had a terrific experience with their program and would encourage anyone considering entering an MFA program to look at Spalding. Elizabeth recently completed two books: a mystery novel and a short story collection she’s currently shopping around to publishers. She’s currently hard at work finishing a draft of a novel about a girl brutalized under the eugenics laws of the 1950s. The story is about her struggle to overcome a sterilization forced upon her by the state and the way she finds meaning in her life through the art of ventriloquism. It's tentatively titled, The Puppet's Voice, and hopes to have it ready to send out to publishers within the next year. Keep an eye on her website, http://www.elizabethburtonwriter.com/, for updates on her publishing journey! For your copy (and to read Elizabeth’s complete story), check out: bit.ly/READFLASH! |
Anchala Studios
Anchala Studios, LLC is a micro press based in Chapel Hill, NC which selects projects appealing to broad audiences and which enrich the community. The Collection: Flash Fiction for Flash Memory is its first publication. Archives
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