The blog has been a little quiet lately. Every time something new comes into my life, it pushes out something else, and this blog has, unfortunately, been a low priority for me.
This time it was the flash game Evony. I’m not linking to it because it’s extremely addictive, and I’m going cold turkey. I was good at this game. Very good. But it was consuming my life, so I dropped it. I feel bad, but feeling bad is what addiction is all about, and I am a video game addict.
Anyways, I finally got around to writing a piece for KC Ball’s flash fiction magazine 10Flash. Normally, I avoid subbing to new magazines because they tend to fold like a cheap suit, or have such low readership my work doesn’t get seen, and with my limited writing time I need all the exposure I can get.
Ball’s project was different for several reasons. One, I got specifically invited and KC is a friend. I want to both support her venture and don’t want to let her down. Two, KC is no unknown. She is a heck of a writer herself, having recently won 3rd place in Writers of the Future, which, as I have said before, is completely equivalent to 1st place. Once you place that highly, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are determined by chance (for instance, whether your story resonated with the particular judges that read it. The judges change from quarter to quarter, so the person who reads your piece is determine… by chance). Three, KC has been a huge supported of MY labour of love, EDF. I can honestly say that the magazine wouldn’t function without her help in the slush.
Anyways, about the specific project, 10Flash is a prompt-driven magazine which is a bit of an experiment that I think could only work in flash fiction. Prompt-driven magazines for longer works (short story length) have failed in the past for lack of quality submissions among other reasons, but with flash, writers can churn out stories in hours (mine took 2.5), so the investment of time you’re chancing is minimal.
The prompt this time was “a librarian on vacation in a foreign land”. I kind of bent that prompt a little as I usually do, but the piece turned out quite well. I actually choked myself up a little as I wrote it, and that’s a pretty good sign.
I’ll post again when the piece actually debuts. I know a lot of my EDF regulars have been burning and yearning to read my work, and this is an opportunity to see if the old man can actually practice what he preaches. Until then, I promise to keep the blog up a little more!
One Comment(+Add)
Thanks for the mention, Jordan.