Another journal

Another year down! This is the fourth year I’ve completed Flash Fiction February and the fourth year I’ve put my favourite pieces into a wee collection and stuck it on Itch. And you can get it right here I’ve always likened the challenge to using a sketchbook, it’s an exercise, more often than not, to learn you can make some words come out at will. “Write 500 words from this prompt” feels very similar to my brain as “look at all these hairstyles and practise drawing them.” But, just like some pages of a sketchbook, sometimes you get something tangible from the practise.

Since writing flash tends to be a more contained practise than a sketchbook page, I am lucky enough to find ten stories every year to bring together, edit, illustrate, and share. My favourite part though, is that once I’ve got a new collection up, I take four favorites (of the ten favorites) from the previous year and share them on my blog. I really just like sharing stuff I’ve made. I like to think people read what I write. And after a year, picking four favourites really does bring the focus in on the most interesting or fun stuff.

Anyway! This year the illustrations were in the vibe of headpieces, with central images. Always a fun challenge to keep it: photocopy black and white AND somehow visually illustrate what isn’t often a visual set of words. In theory I could print any of these out into proper zines. Maybe someday I will.

Until then, here’s the pitch snagged from the collection’s page on Itch, where you can get it for a dollar:

Ten flash fiction pieces collected together with illustrations for each. There’s time loops,

There were probably better ways to spend a time loop than a job interview. Luz had done them. Made a lot of memories. Great stuff.

a smidgen of softness,

The cookbook was one of Cara’s most prized possessions. She’d found it at a junk sale, which seemed to be how it had entered every previous owner’s home. It fell open to the most-used recipes, some pages spice-stained, others clearly the victim of spills… On any of the most-used looking recipes, there was commentary from a half-dozen ghosts scrawled in any empty space.

and also time loops.

Check who is in front of you, is it the same group as every morning? Are they wearing the same clothes as every morning? No! How wonderful! The auntie two people in front of you is wearing a shawl not a sweater today, that’s great! That’s two things different this morning already!

This 7.7k+ word flash fiction collection is available as epub, mobi, and pdf files.

Content warnings: unreality, time loop death.