This is our third anniversary issue; our first issue went live in December of 2007. Congratulations to us. 🙂 I guess we like to start new things with Bruce Holland Rogers. He was one of the first authors we published, with the story “Reconstruction Work.” (The other author was Suzanne Vincent, who later joined the […]
This is the first column in Bruce Holland Rogers’s new writing series, Technically Speaking. If you’d like to read his Short-Short Sighted columns, which are dedicated to writing very short fiction specifically, visit his author page. Over two years ago, I set out to write a column about various forms, traditions, and techniques of flash […]
I woke up after a dream where something, perhaps a snake, had sunk its teeth into my ankle. I knew I hadn’t been bit, that it was just my mind, my body remembering what that shock of teeth felt like. It mimicked the squeeze and punch of teeth that my freshman bio teacher’s boa constrictor […]
A summer night, a porch swing, Grandma Clara gently rocking. A girl comes out from the house. She stares in the dark. “Mom wants you back inside,” she says. “Now.” “No, baby, not yet. Come sit with me.” Clara makes room for her on the swing. The girl stares. “Just one minute, Izzy. I promise.” […]
A little context: The Puritans disparaged Christmas as “Foolstide” and thoroughly discouraged its celebration. The Plymouth Pilgrims even spent their first Christmas Day in the New World putting up a building, thereby showing their complete contempt for the holiday. You can find more information about this at Wikipedia. This story is set during that time […]
Lord knows I didn’t want to shoot Mendez. Hell, he was only a green kid, a frontline infantry replacement just up from boot camp. He acted gung-ho, but he’d never been exposed to live action before. I knew the stark terror he must have felt a few days ago when the enemy tanks rolled over […]