The front door towered over me, a solid slab of studded oak. No one needed a door that big. It was a way to mess with the minds of people stood on the threshold. So too the braided rope which hung beside it and mysteriously disappeared into a hole in | Read more…
Samael weighed the bag of coins in his hand. Even if it were all gold it would be insulting and it clinked like silver. He set the leather pouch on the worn, sticky tavern table and slid it back towards the man sat opposite him. “You’ve got the wrong man,” | Read more…
“Mummy, I picked some berries.” She kept her eyes glued to her phone screen as she tapped out a message. “That’s nice. Make sure you share them with your sister.” “Okay.” When she found them later, their lips and fingers stained deep purple, eyes glazed, she would think, what message? | Read more…
Over on The Great Escape we tried an experiment on National Flash Fiction Day. We happened to be at Cardiff Comic Expo on the day, so I asked the guests there to challenge me to write them a story. I got several different prompts which inspired some weird and wacky | Read more…
I’ve been having a think about what makes a good piece of flash fiction, and while I don’t think I can say it any better than David Gaffney does in this article – Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction (which came out just before the very first National | Read more…
Judd Henderson took his normal morning walk at eleven o’clock. He liked the spring. The scent of cut grass, all but forgotten over the winter, heralded the arrival of warmer weather. The park to the left of his usual route had grown wild with tall grass and a smattering of | Read more…
Mr Aberforth pulled the potato from the ground and brushed off the dirt. He threw it into the bucket with the others, but, as it flew through the air, something about it caught his eye. A strange surge of excitement set his stomach fluttering. He wiped his palms on his | Read more…
The food was at the back of a small, white box. Mushkin put her foot on the smooth surface and tested it. Nothing bad happened. She sniffed and felt with her whiskers. Strange smells mixed with the tempting aroma of wheat but none that she recognised as dangerous. She stretched | Read more…
Ideas are not something I usually struggle with, but sometimes I like to challenge myself to write something based on a prompt purely because it wasn’t my idea. I’ve found in the past that some of the stories I have created through trying to find a story within a prompt | Read more…
Lady was not a very clever cat. She was getting a little old, she had lost a few teeth and she dribbled a bit. She often forgot things like what she was doing or where she was going. Lady lived with another cat called Holly in a house with a | Read more…