Month: January 2023

Welcome to the fourth in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology editors and Microfiction Competition judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2023.

This week, Diane Simmons chats with Amanda Huggins, one of this year's Microfiction Competition judges, about poetry, prose, pressure and what she'd like to see in this year's competition submissions....

 

DS: You embrace many writing forms and have published five collections of short stories and poetry. I understand that your first full-length poetry collection is being published in March 2023. Can you tell us a little about it?

AH: talk to me about when we were perfect is an album of snapshots; a collage of lives unfolding in flashback. Ralph Dartford very kindly said that I pulled off the “difficult feat” of the “the camera of commentary” in my poetry, so I hope that’s what I’ve managed to achieve in this collection.

There’s a strong yearning running through many of the poems for the places to which we can never return and the people we have left behind. They also cast a questioning eye over past misunderstandings, roads not taken, and undeclared love.

However, the collection is not as autobiographical or as deeply personal as I’ve possibly made it sound. Some of the poems are based on my own life experiences, but many more are simply stories straight from my imagination – readers can make up their own minds which are which!

DS: Writers can sometimes feel under pressure to always be putting words on the page. Are there any activities that you feel are as helpful to you as a writer?

AH: I used to feel that pressure all the time, but I tend to be more laid-back these days – I’ve jumped off the hamster wheel! I find walking is the best activity to clear my head – the Yorkshire moors are great for inspiration. And I enjoy getting involved in various art projects as well – being creative in a different way can often help to kickstart new writing.

DS: Do you have any tips for entrants to this year’s micro competition or anything that you would particularly like not to see?

AH: Micro-fiction has only got time for the sideways glance; a glimpse through the crack. But a glimpse is not the same as a fragment, and I still need something whole – a full story rather than an observation or an anecdote. The skill is in conveying what lies off camera and beneath the surface when you have such a limited word count. Without those hidden depths, the story will feel hollow and the reader won’t care about the character/s. In a hundred carefully chosen words the writer needs to make the specific feel universal.

In conclusion, it’s always worth reminding everyone to use their title wisely, as those are valuable extra words.

DS: Were you a reader as a child? If so, did you have a favourite author?

AH: I was an avid reader well before I went to school. When I was very young I used to make my mother read the same bedtime stories on repeat – especially Enid Blyton’s Book of Brownies, as I loved the adventures of Hop, Skip and Jump. She’d miss bits out and try to whizz through to the end, but I always noticed, and we both decided it would be a lot better if I learned to read them myself.

My favourite author was without doubt Enid Blyton, and I devoured the Famous Five, the Five Find-Outers and the Adventure Series. I also loved anything to do with horses – so the Pullein-Thompson sisters, K M Peyton and Ruby Ferguson were firm favourites. The Brumby by Mary Elwyn Patchett was one book which really stuck in my mind.

Then when I was around eleven or twelve I started reading everything by Agatha Christie and stealing my parents’ Arthur Hailey blockbusters!

DS: I know that you enjoy travel writing. Do you have a favourite country or place that you enjoy writing about?

AH: I enjoy writing about everywhere I’ve been – particularly Japan, India, Cuba and Eastern Europe – and I often set my fiction in those countries too. But Japan is my absolute favourite place both to visit and to write about. Whenever I return to Japan it feels like an emotional homecoming. I’ve often struggled to explain or define this strong connection, or to pin down exactly why I love the country so much, and I think the words remain elusive because the reasons are more spiritual than tangible.

In the countryside and mountains, Japan is light and shadow, moss and stone, the sound of a shoji screen sliding shut, of tea pouring and of temple bells, the scent of tatami matting and cedar, the exhilarating joy of climbing above the clouds. But to me, the cities are equally magical. Neon lights can be just as beguiling as the glow of lanterns along cobbled streets, and Tokyo in particular is fascinating and seductive. To outsiders, it can appear to be a place when quiet contemplation is impossible, and this can go hand in hand with the notion of things never being exactly as they seem, of them being a little off-centre, misunderstood, or lost in translation. And those are all great things to write about!

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Amanda Huggins is the author of All Our Squandered Beauty and Crossing the Lines – both of which won a Saboteur Award for Best Novella – as well as five collections of short stories and poetry. Amanda's fiction and travel writing have appeared in publications such as Mslexia, Popshot, Tokyo Weekender, The Telegraph, Traveller, Wanderlust and the Guardian. Three of her flash fiction stories have also been broadcast on BBC radio. She has won numerous awards, including the Colm Toibin International Short Story Award, the H E Bates Short Story Prize and the British Guild of Travel Writers New Travel Writer of the Year. She was a runner-up in the Costa Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Flash Prize, The Alpine Fellowship Award and many others. Amanda lives in Yorkshire and works as an editor and publishing assistant.

 

Welcome to the third in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology editors and Microfiction Competition judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2023.

This week, Diane Simmons chats with Johanna Robinson, one of this year's Microfiction Competition judges, about novellas-in-flash, historical fiction and her advice for writers entering this year's competition....

 

DS: Your novella-in-flash Homing was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2019 and shortlisted in the Saboteur Awards in 2020. Can you tell us a little about it?

JR: Homing tells the story of a Norwegian family over five decades from before the Second World War to the 1970s. It focuses mainly on Caroline, the young daughter, but we see events from the perspectives of her mother and siblings too. The family live in a tiny coastal village that was razed to the ground by the Nazis because of the residents’ involvement in the Resistance. This part is true – the village, the destruction, and the rebuilding – although the family is fictional. The book also looks at identity, and where and how it’s possible to locate home once you have moved from where you grew up.

DS: You obviously enjoy writing historical fiction. Is there a period of history when you would like to have lived?

JR: I love historical fiction. What attracts me actually is local history, the ‘small’ events and patterns of a particular place and the people who lived there, which shaped the place it has evolved into – the DNA of landscape and architecture and how they impact those who come after. And none of these events are ‘small’ to the people involved, of course. I try to write without rose-tinted specs, so any period of history comes with its struggles and pain and often fear. To answer the question, perhaps the turn of the last century, before world war was on the horizon, and there was a sense of change.

DS: Writing a micro fiction of 100 words or fewer is no easy task. Do you have any advice for entrants to the competition.

JR: Even 100 words can stay with a reader, lodge in their mind. For me, two are Sharon Telfer’s ‘Gelsenkirchen: 10/10ths cloud, 30 aircraft lost’ and Gaynor Jones’ ‘Ogdens’. Look at the patterns in each of them – the steps that are both repetitive and yet move the story forward a gear. Can you combine this rhythm and movement? It goes without saying that each word needs to earn its place, both in its own right and in relation to those placed either side. Try moving words around, and play with structure. Read it again when you’re done. Is there an overriding emotion, and an underlying one?

DS: Have you always written fiction? If not, can you remember what inspired you to start?

JR: I read non-stop growing up, and loved writing stories. I got a typewriter for Christmas when I was about nine and wrote a story about the adventures of a big bouncing ball that escaped its owner. I was convinced I’d win the competition I entered. I didn’t and I’d sent my only copy! But it never, ever occurred to me that being a writer was a ‘thing’. There was a disconnect between the authors of the books I read and the fact someone, a person, had written them. I’m sad I didn’t pay more attention to the possibilities then, but there was no internet for community or research. I did start a book in about 2001, but no one ever saw it (though some of it actually made it into Homing). Then came work, socialising, children, retraining… So I started writing on a Comma Press short story course in 2016 in Liverpool. I can still remember the goosebumps of the first session!

DS: If you could sit down and have a chat with any three writers from history, who would they be?

JR: Published writers – Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Mark Twain, because of the times and places they lived in as much as their books. But I’d also want people at the table who told inherited fireside stories or who wrote in their diary in the evening. The unpublished ones, often forgotten ones.

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Johanna Robinson is based near Liverpool, UK, and has been writing short fiction since 2016. Her work has been featured in various magazines and anthologies, including SmokeLong, Reflex Press and Mslexia. In 2020, she won the TSS Cambridge Prize for Flash Fiction and the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and in 2019 Ad Hoc Fiction published her novella-in-flash Homing, which follows a Norwegian Resistance family in the Second World War. She is currently working on a novel set in Victorian Liverpool, and has been funded by Arts Council England. More of her work can be found at www.johanna-robinson.com.

Welcome to the second in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology editors and Microfiction Competition judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2023.

This week, Diane Simmons chats with Fiona J. Mackintosh, one of this year's Microfiction Competition judges, about everything from flash to novels to collections, as well as her advice for writers entering this year's competition....

 

DS: You won the National Flash Fiction Day Micro Fiction Competition in 2018 with The Birth of The Baptist and have had considerable success in other flash competitions. Do you have any advice for writers entering the micro fiction competition?

FJM: I find writing microfiction hard to be honest. I’m very committed to telling stories with a beginning, middle, and end (though not necessarily in that order of course) and that’s insanely hard to do in 100 words or less. I take my hat off to anyone who even attempts it, and the best examples are little miracles. The Birth of the Baptist was originally a tiny fragment of a longer story about a young couple travelling around Italy, but I came to realise that this one little paragraph encapsulated a whole arc of knowing you’re going to lose love even while you still have it. So basically, the piece was a fluke! Having said that, I do know a great micro when I see one, and I’m very much looking forward to reading the entries for 2023.

DS: You are a Scottish-American writer living in America. I wondered if you write in a different style depending on which country the story is set in.

FJM: To some extent I do, yes. The main difference is in the cadence of the characters’ speech and their internal monologues. It can take a while to get into the swing of it, but once I get it, I find that even my own thoughts tend to be in that character’s rhythm and vernacular. Though once the story’s written, I always try to get a second opinion from a beta reader because sometimes a Brit expression creeps into an American story and vice versa. And then there’s English versus Scottish characters. Recently, I’ve been writing a lot of stuff set in Scotland, which is why I have to keep going back there to make sure I’m getting the voices right. At least that’s my excuse!

DS: Your flash collection The Yet Unknowing World was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2021. Did you enjoy the process of putting together a collection and do you have any advice for anyone considering doing one themselves?

FJM: I loved it! Ad Hoc Fiction is a fabulous publisher and gave me plenty of leeway and support. I’d hit on the idea of New World (stories set in the US) and Old World (stories set in Europe and the rest of the globe) early on, but within those two categories, getting the flashes in the most readable order was a bit of a struggle. I enlisted the help of some trusted friends, including Jeanette Sheppard, whose moving flash collection Seventy Percent Water won the EllipsisZine Flash Fiction Collection Competition, and Keith Donohue, the author of several excellent novels including the international bestseller The Stolen Child. On their advice, I tried to vary the length and style of the stories as well as the tone, though tone was tricky as I tend to write a lot of depressing stories – odd because I’m quite a cheerful person in real life! Keith also suggested varying the order by first, second, and third person, which hadn’t occurred to me but made a lot of sense. I’m pretty happy with how the order turned out.

That being said, I’m not sure that most people read flash collections from start to finish like they would a novella-in-flash. It can be more rewarding to read them one at a time and let each one settle into your consciousness before moving on to the next – much like reading a book of poetry. Otherwise, the stories can tend to blur into each other in the reader’s mind. The bottom line is the quality and resonance of the individual stories are what matters most.

DS: I know that as well as a being a flash fiction writer, you are a novelist. I wondered if being a flash fiction writer has influenced your novel writing and whether you find it difficult to switch between the two forms?

FJM: Flash has absolutely improved my writing style in general and has had a very positive knock-on effect on my novel writing, or so I believe. In fact, after I began learning the lessons of flash writing, I rewrote much of the language in my historical novel Ancestral Virgins. It took me a long time, but I believe it’s a much better book for the effort.

I tend to jump around from project to project like a bloody grasshopper – current novel, other current novel, short stories, flashes – and in principle I have no trouble switching between them. But when my day job is particularly intense, flash is the only writing I can do in the ten-minute intervals available to me, and it’s a godsend for keeping me sane.

DS: Did you have a favourite novel as a child? If so, do you ever go back and re-read it?

FJM: Sooo many. Since I was horse mad, most of my faves involved quadrupeds. I reread National Velvet as an adult and was surprised to find how good it was. Black Beauty was much too sad for me, but it does make a cameo appearance in my historical novel, Ancestral Virgins. Other faves were Little Women, the What Katy Did series, The Borrowers, the Narnia books, The Secret Garden, and Tom’s Midnight Garden to name but a few. I only wish I had as much time now to read for pleasure as I did then!

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Fiona J. Mackintosh (www.fionajmackintosh.com) is the Scottish-American author of a flash collection, The Yet Unknowing World published in the UK by Ad Hoc Fiction. She has won the Fish, Bath, Reflex, Flash 500, and NFFD Micro competitions, and her short stories have been listed in several competitions in the UK and Ireland. She lives just outside Washington D.C., and her historical novel Ancestral Virgins is currently on submission to agents.

We'll be resuming our 2023 interview series with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology editors and Microfiction Competition judges next week, but in the meantime, we thought we'd revisit NFFD's Anthology Editor Karen Jones' advice for anthology submitters from her 3 January 2022 interview with Diane Simmons.

Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2023.

 

Diane: Every year, National Flash Fiction Day produces an anthology with a unique theme.  Is there anything you would like to particularly see in this year's submissions? Or not see?

Karen: I’d love to see some wild interpretations of the theme – things I hadn’t thought of, things that make me sit up and take notice. I always say when I’m judging or acting as submissions editor that I want you to surprise me, and it’s no different here. Themes can be constricting but I hope this one can be interpreted widely enough to allow people do something different. Or, you know, if you’re telling an old story, at least tell it in a new way.

I don’t particularly want to see a lot of pandemic stories, purely because I’ve seen so many already, and I’m also not a big fan of twist endings. Other subjects it’s probably best to avoid, again, because we see them so often, are dementia/Alzheimer’s, cancer, death of a child. I’m not saying don’t write about any of these things, just be aware that you may be up against lots of others writing on the same themes, and that immediately reduces your chances of being accepted.

 

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Karen Jones is a flash and short story writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Micro Fiction and The Pushcart Prize, and her story Small Mercies was included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and BIFFY50 2019. In 2021 she won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Fiction Prize, Flash 500, Reflex Fiction and Retreat West Monthly Micro and was shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction, Bath Short Story Award and longlisted for Fractured Lit Flash Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. Her novella-in-flash, When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. She is Special Features Editor at New Flash Fiction Review.