I’m thrilled to announce the new Smokelong Quarterly double-issue is out! My story, Complicit, was a Smokelong Weekly feature back in February and is now up again as well as an interview of me by Tara Laskowski. Beth Thomas and Tara are the senior editors of Smokelong taking over for the wonderful Dave Clapper and it’s clear they are determined to continue to make Smokelong beautiful and relevant (and I’m not saying that because I have a story there!)

Look for me down there in purple and a couple of writing buds too.

I’m very lucky. I’m on my way to the Tin House Workshop tomorrow. I’m excited and more than a little ADD. Okay. It’s 11:51 at night. My plane leaves at six am tomorrow. I have to get up at 3:00 am. Clothes are neatly stacked on my bed. Just about everything is BLACK. I have no idea what to put into my suitcase. Will it be cold or hot? I pray for cold. I look so much better in a sweatshirt.

I’m going early so I can finish a couple stories and go to Powells. Maybe lose 5 pounds? Does my hotel have a gym? Then I could buy something that isn’t black and hot and oh, dear. I hope it’s raining.

I just printed up everyone’s piece 11 of them changing them all to garamond 11 pt. single spaced so I can manage to carry my brief case. And what am I doing? FACEBOOK! Well, I was doing FB until they told me this was too long so I moved it on over to my blog.

But what I should be doing is looking for flash drives, extention cords, power cords, cat cords (whatever that’s called), phone cord, my phone, my notebook I put together with my ticket information, and my camera, my camera charger, my ipod, my earphones, my neck pillow, my earplugs–the days of a writer traveling light are long gone–so what I really want to do is go look at the second half of So You Think You can Dance!

At Flash Fiction Chronicles, we’re planning to spend some time posting various articles about genres and sub genres. We have several writers committed to writing posts, but are on the look out for more. These can be opinion pieces (most discussion of genre falls under the classification since since few people agree), but they should all exhibit knowledge either from experience or research regarding the conventions they discuss.

Genre Safari!!! « Flash Fiction Chronicles

If you’re a writer and you know your use of language is strong but you are struggling with story structure (most of us do) watch this video of Alex Wong and Twitch on So You Think You Can Dance at UTube. Alex and Twitch

A new month of fiction at Every Day Fiction.

Jul 1/Alastair McIntyre/No Cause for Alarm
Jul 2/J.R. Hochman/Jabbers
Jul 3/S O Asante/All His Favourites
Jul 4/Erin M. Kinch/The Vote
Jul 5/Rickey Rivers Jr./The Result of the Argument
Jul 6/Tanya L. Schofield/Chance Encounter
Jul 7/Oonah V Joslin/Turn About
Jul 8/JR Hume/Self Promotion
Jul 9/Kathee Jantzi/Why Not Me?
Jul 10/Joshua Tate/The Animal
Jul 11/Kyle Hemmings/The Dance Floor
Jul 12/John Keel/Betting Kevin
Jul 13/Gay Degani/To Have and To Hold
Jul 14/Peter Tupper/Disappearing Girl
Jul 15/Amber Foster/Fallen
Jul 16/Daniel Austin Warren/Sleeping
Jul 17/Manuel Royal/Earth Air Fire
Jul 18/AJ Smith/Echo
Jul 19/Walter Giersbach/Day of Moving Hell
Jul 20/Jonathan Pinnock/The Colour of Criticism
Jul 21/Therese Arkenberg/Few Are Called…
Jul 22/Mickey Mills/One in Four Shot
Jul 23/Gaius Coffey/Alexei
Jul 24/Bret Bass/No Eternities, Only Moments
Jul 25/David Macpherson/Fright Wig
Jul 26/James Burt/A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand
Jul 27/Amanda Hayter/In the Key of Love
Jul 28/Deborah Winter-Blood/Birds of Prey
Jul 29/Ramon Rozas III/One Afternoon in Geneva
Jul 30/Steven Saus/Precipitation
Jul 31/Wayne Scheer/A Good Woman

I posted a review yesterday for Nik Perring’s debut collection, Not So Perfect. Nik is a fellow short story writer I “met” through a friend Sarah Hilary a couple years ago and have followed him online ever since. He’s an amazingly talented storyteller, able to give characters life with just a stroke or two. And characters you care about. If you get a chance to head over there, please do.

Not So Perfect but maybe YES « Flash Fiction Chronicles