I’ve had a cracking start to 2020 both writing and non-writing wise. I’ve visited friends and family in Bolton and attended a very cool concert in Manc with them, celebrated my birthday with a cake in the shape of an open book that had one of my flash fictions (in icing) on the open pages, been on my first ever writing retreat which was totally wonderful, visited Arctic Sweden to spend a night in the Ice Hotel and see the Northern Lights – and we SAW them, met one of my best feedback writing buddies Gaynor Jones who I’d hither-to never met in real life, celebrated my son’s 21st birthday and won a really cool flash competition. Here’s a montage of pics of the above which I’ve really enjoyed uploading as a sort of quick jaunt down very recent-memory lane.

Pure writing wise things have been going really well. One of my flashes was chosen by the lovely Laura Black for Fictive Dream’s Flash February. It was published 24/2/2020 and was accompanied by a wonderful piece of artwork by the uber-talented  Claudia McGill who did a different piece of artwork for every story and which the writers get to keep (the one for their particular flash). This whole experience with Fictive Dream has been exactly that – a joyous dream. Here’s the link to both flash and artwork. https://fictivedream.com/2020/02/24/the-never-ending-story/ 

Also one of my stories was selected for Ellipsis 7 which will be out in print by the end of the month and I came 4th in Flash Frenzy, Molotov Cocktail’s most recent competition. Here’s the link to that story https://themolotovcocktail.com/vol-10/flash-frenzy/eternity-ring/

And finally, as aforementioned, I WON Flash 500 this time. Which I was soooo chuffed about. Here’s the link to both the judges comments and my story. I’m so grateful to Ingrid the judge for placing me first because the other  winning stories were just brilliant. http://www.flash500.com/index_files/winfq19.html

and http://www.flash500.com/index_files/fqfp19.html

And finally….finally… here’s a pic of the northern lights, darker than in real life but they are very hard to capture. Seeing them was truly amazingly strange and timeless. As they flickered and plumed above us in the snow-covered forest, I thought of all the people who’d seen them before me, before anyone knew the science, and I felt such a strong connection. Going to write a story about it one day, but not now because after this week I’m going to stop writing flash and focus on my long-form-thing-that’s-not-a-novel. Feedback from the peeps at the Writing Retreat was that I need to get it written so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. No more flashing until I have a first draft!

And finally…finally…finally…I had some more really good writing news which I can’t share yet because I’m sworn to secrecy. Will blog about it as soon as I’m given the okay.