Wow–Just one week ago, I was celebrating some truly incredible, wonderful news via the lovely Ms. Anna Meade:
WOOOOOOOOOO! Go forth to her website and pour out congratulations and love, as it was a mightily hard-fought battle but her story prevailed.
Melanie’s entry, The Catch, is a pithy bite of dark flash fiction with a crunch at the end. I was filled with dread the entire time I read it and she built the suspense to the unbearable climax. Well done, Melanie! I look forward to collaborating with you on my next flash fiction contest in 2013!
When the audio recording of The Catch is posted, I will let everyone know!
Seriously! That happened! I am still so humbled and excited and proud and flabbergasted. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Dark Fairy, please let me introduce you to Anna and her wonderful website Yearning for Wonderland, wherein you will find incredible interviews, amazing writerly companions, and truly inspiring contests. I entered the Behind the Curtain contest because, well, Anna’s prompts are awesome. For example, here’s the prompt from #BTCurtain:
Greasepaint and floodlights and cheerful music out front, but behind the curtain sometimes darker dramas unfold. Whether theatre or circus, pantomime or ballet, there is the world presented…and then the world hidden.
Too often, a gorgeous, painted stage facade conceals dry rot and warped wood. The clown’s smile wipes away to reveal bitter rage. The ballerina’s twisted foot, the leading man’s alcoholism, the abuse of performing animals, all carefully hidden from the audience. For the price of just a ticket, the artifice is yours.
Yet I challenge you to pull it aside, to peek behind the curtain. Who do you see, what do they feel, and most importantly what do they hide?
How could a writer NOT respond with great creative enthusiasm to that? So, long story short, I entered, I read over sixty other fabulous stories, and last Friday, amazingly, my story was selected as the grand winner, along with…Sophie Moss (@smosswrites) for Scarlett’s Rose Petal Revenge,
J. Whitworth Hazzard (@zombiemechanics) for his creepy, stalker story, Scopophiliac, and Jessica Marcarelli (@jmarcarelli) for her entry, Behind the Curtain.
And I am so grateful. Even more so now that I’ve spent the time since that wonderful moment riding out a hurricane and living without power and heat in descending temps, only to flee New Jersey for the refuge of my parent’s home in NC late last night. This is the first time I’ve been back online, and sitting in a warm living room with heat and hot food and a warm blanket–do you notice a motif, here? I was really cold for the last week!
But while I was freezing, I was also thinking a lot. About winning. And losing. And how there really is no way to inhabit one of those spaces entirely. We are all winning and losing a little bit each and every day. The tally adds up to a vague gray sum, something neither black nor white, but a shade of human in a way. For one moment, your heart soars, and the very next it plummets. I think I’ve learned not to hold too tightly to any of these moments. It’s best to let them ebb and flow, and try to remember who you are and what you want out of this day, out of this moment–and know that regardless, there will be wins and there will be losses, but all that matters is staying the course.
When the tour arrived in Plimpton, Angus found his venue was a crumbling barn hardly large enough to accommodate the trapeze. Stone walls buttressed each end of the building. A sagging roof spanned the gap.
“These buggers expect to see someone fly,” Angus grumbled, leaving Joanna and Marcus to produce some semblance of their regular show.
They worked late, and by the following day Joanna was certain of two things: one, that a miracle was required to pull off their tricks, and two, that she was, to her great satisfaction, with child.
As the sun waned, weak beneath the upland clouds, Joanna’s joy at the gentle nausea in her stomach gave way to a deeper, biting pain at the thought of confessing to Marcus.
When he’d selected her six months ago, the prospect of roaming the countryside with a circus had seemed a dream. Joanna had risen to every challenge, she’d soon found herself rising from Marcus’s bed in the mornings as well. But he had no need of a wife, as he’d made clear from their first stumbling fall into the straw. Still, Joanna hoped that a child might make a better prospect.
She held her confession taut on the tip of her tongue until moments before their act.
“Marcus,” she said quietly. “I’m pregnant.”
He ceased wrapping his ankles momentarily, then continued as though she had not spoken. She wondered if he’d heard her at all.
Angus passed, clapping Marcus on the back, and Marcus responded with a wry remark about barns.
At this, Joanna became certain he hadn’t heard, and resolved to confess during a gentler moment. She tied her last ribbon, rubbed chalk into her palms, and climbed to the eaves.
As Angus bellowed below, Joanna set off, sweeping through the air to meet Marcus. They flowed through their routine, arms and legs meeting as one, and yet Marcus avoided her eyes.
A pit formed in Joanna’s stomach, a hard little thing that grew sharper with each turn.
The finale arrived, a long, arcing throw, which they had planned dramatically close to the stone wall. Joanna’s body swung back, and as she turned to face Marcus, his eyes met hers, and she knew then that he had heard her.
Her legs whipped away, towards the uncompromising stone, and she reached for him, but instead of gripping tightly to her fingers, Marcus let her go.
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Today is National Flash Fiction Day in the UK! The event has become somewhat international, but the organizers are mainly in the UK. If you haven’t heard about it, NFFD is an event to celebrate all that is awesome about flash fiction. The quick surprises, the sudden heartbreak, the mysterious atmospheres . . . some writers are not so excited about flash fiction. Others love it.
In my opinion, flash is a lot like a design charette. Often, it’s spurred by an esoteric prompt or image, and the stories that result can be quite surprising. I enjoy writing and reading it. Writing flash is like doing a few jumping jacks in your brain. If you’d like to read some, there are MANY sites serving up delicious little bites of writing from around the world today, including:
National Flash Fiction Day
Flash Flood
1000 Words
Flash Points
Flash writing doesn’t just happen today–there are many bloggers who run weekly prompts and contests. I’ll leave you with a bit of flash I recently wrote for Rebecca Clare Smith’s SatSunTails, which happens every weekend.
The estate room at Ludwig & Sons was deep, and dark, and full of strangers. Fabrizio shuffled down the aisle, cane in hand. White flowers lined the walk. It might have been a wedding, but Eliana had married someone else, long ago.
He chose a seat on the right, near the back, out of the way.
The executor stepped to the front. He read her will slowly, the words careful, the tone loving. Murmurs rippled among the crowd at each bequest. The Milan estate went to her niece, the paintings to her nephews. The gifts were generous. The strangers smiled and cried.
At last his name was called. “To Mons. Fabrizio Castelli, I leave my fondest memory.”
He accepted the vial. He inhaled the scent.
It took him there, to the wall, to the warmth of the sun. His lips pressed her cheek. She laughed. They were together. And he was happy.
–152 words
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