>>Nostalgia For Infinity

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a piece of Friday flash fiction. I hope to post another entry later in the day explaining why. For the time being, here is another story that is technically too long to be flash, clocking in at 1,171 words.

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FUNERAL

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I made it to Friday, and managed four pieces of flash fiction over the course of the week. Not quite five but it’s a decent showing. You’ll have to imagine me saying that sardonically and throwing pointed looks at some of my fellow flash slacktioneers.

Today’s story is fairly lightweight, I’m afraid, as I’m a bit idea’d out after a busy week and managing to fling myself off my bike yesterday (thus, I feel like I’ve been beaten up… by tarmac).

The title is shamelessly stolen from the excellent Fuck Buttons.

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Colours Move

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What was that about the author meeting his own deadlines?

Yeah, I’m pretty much made of fail. Oh well. Here’s today’s flash fiction. This one’s about punk rock, which will no doubt impress my regular readers as it’s a subject which I so rarely touch upon. The soundtrack for this one is (Shut) Up the Punx!!!

If you missed ‘em earlier in the week, here’s Wanderlust and here’s Heralded By Iron.

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PUNK’S NOT DEAD

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Here’s this week’s F3, which is another music-based rather than genre story. I’m not happy with this one but I’m not going to have any time to rewrite it or write an alternative piece, and I’m determined to stick to publishing one story a week. Some of my thoughts in the comments – I wouldn’t recommend reading those until you’ve read the story, of course.

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Breaking the Circle

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I’m determined to stick as closely as I can to doing this every week, even if it means being late. So here’s yesterday’s Friday Flash, which I finished today after waking up too late to get to London for the protest against Israel’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Worst. Activist. Ever.

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SOME KIND OF SUPERHERO

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Happy new year, everyone. Here’s a fairly frivolous piece of F3 for you. Following the trend established by Gareth Jones and Neil Beynon, this piece is themed around the new year. Enjoy.

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Taking my cue from Gareth L. Powell, here are my top ten Friday flash fiction stories of 2008.

1. Our Bright Horizons – A deliberate stylistic and thematic departure from much of what I’d written before. Difficult, but fun.
2. We’re Never Going Home! – the first of a series of latter-’08 tales with titles stolen from my favourite bands, and an attempt to fuse my love of punk rock with my love of surreal fantasy/horror.
3. Interdiction Zone – a mildly amusing – and slightly inhumane – piece of post-apocalyptic SF set in the same dying world as several other F3 tales.
4. Love Story – an experimental piece of fiction that tries to bind language directly into the narrative, a trick I freely admit I stole from Ellis Sharp (who does it much better than me).
5. My Mother the Robot – yet another stylistic experiment, this was written in the style of a young girl’s diary. You can either take it literally, or regard it as the sort of fantasies children develop to deal with parental divorce.
6. Watching the Valves – another post-apocalyptic SF piece which is inspired by both Mad Max 2 and The World Without Us (specifically the chapter about the Texas oil refineries).
7. This Urban Aesthetic – probably one of the few F3 stories I wrote that works well as a stand-alone story. One of only a few of my stories to receive a positive response in Zinos-Amaro’s review of Illuminations.
8. Bitterness the Star – it’s very recent but, to paraphrase Neil, I like the macro/micro scale juxtaposition. Has some thematic similarities with ‘Love Story’, above. I wonder why that might be!
9. Earthbound – the other F3 writers who commented like this quite a lot, perhaps more than I did. Just goes to show that writers oughtn’t listen to themselves too often.
10. Releasing Moments – a flawed 2nd-person perspective experiment that revisits the concept central to Carry These Songs Like a Comfort Wherever You Go.

I think the calibre of my writing has improved greatly over the last 12 months, especially where flash fiction is concerned. I’m proud of these stories.

This year I’ve written 23 pieces of fiction, which is a bit less than one every fortnight. I think my poor output over the last three months has really dragged this figure down. So it goes. Still, ‘Bitterness The Star’ last Friday brought my overall total to 39 pieces (or 40 if you include Excerpts from Eastercon as two, or 39 again if you exclude the over-long Half-day of the Dead). Roll on F3 ’09.

Howdy, readers. It’s been a while. I hope you enjoy this.

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Here’s this week’s Friday flash fiction: enjoy! I think it’s thematically a bit too similar to We’re Never Going Home! I’m a bit too caught up in the musical side of my life right now for much else to penetrate; so it goes. Oh, and my good friend Greg H may be joining the F3 posse… I’ll keep you posted! No links as yet, because the absent-minded indie fop doesn’t remember where his own blog is. See, he was born to be a writer.

Hopefully over the weekend I will be bringing you some live and recorded music reviews; we’ll see how that goes. Also, somewhere out there are two book reviews for Vector. I’m puzzled that the latest issue hasn’t appeared yet. Semper fi, eh?

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CARRIED OUT TO THE SEA

The moon is high in a cloudless sky, and the reflected light of that thin crescent jostles with the hundred thousand twinkles of citylight to illuminate the streets below. Some of the competing light bounces off the surface of the river that splits the metropolis in two, wavering as the water is stirred by a chill night breeze.

The Axeman is walking across the great bridge, instrument slung diagonally across his back by the shoulder strap. Its strings are naked and cold in the night air. The pickups glow momentarily as the instrument’s bearer walks beneath a streetlight. People used to call him FR. People used to shout his name.

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You may have noticed that, after the frenetic multiple daily posts of last week, things have quietened down a bit at NFI. It just so happened that my scheduled Neverscapes reposts coincided with a big bundle of other writing. There’s not much on the cards this week, although as usual there’ll be the del.icio.us link round-ups to sift through for tasty Intertron plankton, plus Friday Flash Fiction at the end of the week.

Speaking of F3, I missed out last week which was a bit unfortunate as it was something of a special date. » Read the rest of this entry «