It’s been a while since I posted, what with ongoing health changes in the midst of Lockdown. My main writing focus has been on short stories in my Mum series published on CafeLit and a few competitions. Okehampton ran its first short story competition and I’m delighted to hear my friend won! Congratulations!
Here’s to better times ahead and stay safe everyone.
This delightful English language anthology of literary fiction comprises the winning entries for the 2018, 2019 and 2020 Waterloo Festival Writing Competitions. The themes were, respectively, To Be... To Become, Transforming Being and Transforming Communities. We chose these because they tell a good story, have a strong voice, and are imaginative in their interpretation of the theme. The writers present us with characters that are believable and rounded. The stories all contain a pleasing narrative balance.
Entrants were asked to produce a short story or a monologue in 1,000 words or fewer. Less is certainly more here. Style is diverse and each story is completely different from the others.
RRP = £8.00
Maroula submitted to us in response to our open call. She is not one of our regular writers. We liked her work and so we were pleased to publish her.
The title came about after discussion between Maroula and her editor. It’s often the way with titles. They’ll occur as we get the book ready for publication. Sometimes the title of a collection will also be the title of one of the pieces – perhaps one that epitomizes the overriding theme of the collection.
This went through the normal three stages of editing. One of our other flash fiction contributors, Allison Symes, edited this book.
We used the normal “frame” that we have on all of our flash collections. Maroula is an established poet and artist so we used some of her art work for the cover.
Some of the reviews on Amazon give a useful indication of the style:
“Short striking stories capturing pivotal moments of peoples' lives, tough lives in the fringes of society, in a starkly brutal but honest manner dressed poetically with mesmerising and haunting language.”
“Simply told stories in which Maroula Blades sees beyond the obvious, which is not obvious at all.”
“Great depth is found in these
weaving narratives, to go on these journeys was an immersive experience - food
for the soul.
Wonderful.”
Flash as ever is for the reader who hasn’t got a lot of time to sit with a book in their hands but has plenty of time to think. You read the story and it stays with you for quite a while as you go about your everyday business.
This book has some way to go to cover all of its costs but it continues to sell steadily.
We have published a record number of books in the last twelve months. We are pleased to have this within our collection.
It’s always great if you can buy the book and give us a review. Just click on the image to be taken to Amazon. If you would like to review and you are strapped for cash, just get in touch for a free PDF or mobi-file.
