Short Stories 366:121 — “Foie Gras,” by Charles Payseur

I think I've championed the joy that is a Charles Payseur short story on this story-a-day journey twice times thus far, and talked about his stories a couple of times during my Sunday Shorts regular posts, and also during the holidays I've talked up his supremely enjoyable holiday super-villain stories. There's a reason for that: …

Short Stories 366:90 — “This Will Not Happen To You,” by Melissa Lingen

This very short piece packs one heck of a punch. It's a single character voice, speaking out to the reader (as "you"), and there's a kind of low-level fury throughout that I frankly loved. Basically, this is one person explaining what happened to them, but it's framed throughout as a "but don't worry, it could …

Proof of Concept

Back in 2018, I did a monthly flash fiction draw. Three draws from a deck of cards to get a writing prompt of: genre, setting, and object. 1,000 words, and a flash fiction story in the chosen genre, set in the chosen setting, including the chosen object. Well, this year, Cait Gordon picked up the …

Short Stories 366:1 — “Chocolate Milkshake Number 314” by Caroline M. Yoachim

This may be a terrible idea, but a quite a few years ago, back when I have a Livejournal, I decided to blog once a day about a short story. It was called Short Stories 365, and I managed the feat. For a whole year, once a day, a review of a short fiction piece. …

Sunday Shorts—Binaries by S.B. Divya

This flash fiction piece from People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction has a super-clever narrative conceit: it rolls out over a binary progression of years of the main character's life. She's 1. Then she's 2. Then she's 4. Then she's 8, 16, 32... You get it. That it progresses beyond the 64-128 is where the …

Sunday Shorts—Breathe Deep, Breathe Free by Jennifer Marie Brissett

One of the flash fiction stories in People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction, this one struck hard and quick. The narrative unfolds around an ecological disaster of some sort (it's not entirely clear how it began, but the end result is a "coating" on everything outside, and the creep of the toxin into the air …