So I’m full of a cold and feeling proper shocking but couldn’t let today go without posting this. Haven’t blogged since the night of the US election – before the results were announced – and in these few hours before the new president is sworn in, feeling worse than having a cold bug might have made me feel on its own – sort of anxious, ill-at-ease and full of foreboding, I felt driven to shift my bum out of bed to post this by way of solidarity with anyone who feels the same. But enough of the written word – here is my first vlog – a flash fiction all about today though I did not know it when I wrote it.

Love and peace to friends all over the world today.

Didn’t go to the annual Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol last weekend, and for the last couple of days have spent a LOT of time scrolling through wonderful happy photos that attendees from all over the world have been posting on socials, feeling a weird mixture of envy, regret, nostalgia and something a bit like home-sickness.

I didn’t go this year not because I didn’t want to go, but because when booking was open, I was in the midst of living through the deaths of two very elderly family members. And they’re complicated things are the deaths of elderly family members especially ones you’ve helped care for for years, and who, as time progressed wanted not to be here anymore. Both their deaths were seriously bittersweet because whilst we will miss them terribly,it also feels like they’ve been set free. The ensuing funerals were strangely ambivalent too – weird clouds of billowing emotion yet also solid absolutes – sharp lines drawn in the sand from which there is no going back.

Bri died in Feb as previously documented here, totally in control of his final days, with palliative care organised at home having opted not to continue with his medication. Roz died in June after a long and lingering four-year illness following several strokes that over time rendered her bedbound and unable to talk and not herself anymore. The way she died was so out of kilter with the glamourous, svelt, organised person she always was. A force of nature, full of life, and the only person I’ve ever known who could talk all the way through a meal and still be the first to finish and yet never EVER talk with her mouth full. In health she was dapper and classy, with her hair always done and her nails always polished – but her death was lingering and her personality sort of dissolved away right before our eyes – which is why, when my husband asked me to choose and read a poem at her funeral, I wrote her a flash instead. To be fair, she was never into poetry, she loved her cat, gardening – especially roses – wine, gin, food, music, beautiful ornaments, to laugh out loud, and she really really loved her family. Writing Roz’s flash, like writing nearly always does, helped me tremendously to process conflicting emotions especially the anger, rage even, that I’d first felt in February after Bri died, when Roz was resuscitated after another suspected stroke very much against the wishes she’d set down and documented, when she was still in a position to make her wishes known. They couldn’t find the paperwork, and in its absence, would not listen.

Her funeral was held on the one truly bright, hot summer’s day we’ve had this year. The clans gathered to say goodbye, to raise a glass, to talk about her life and I read my tiny story about her reimagined death, making it into something more in-line with what she might have chosen for herself. Reading helped too. It raised some eyebrows and some smiles, and afterwards at the pub, everyone said I should sub it somewhere so it can float round cyberspace like a weird gravestone, marking Roz’s passing but also bringing her back to life a wee bit. And I think I will, because she would’ve bloody loved it and because now she really is gone, and we’ve been able to remember who she truly was, it feels a bit like we’ve got her back again.

After the funeral my sister decided to stay a day longer than planned – she’d come in her camper van and parked it up on the common land opposite our cottage so it cost nowt to linger, and for one perfect day we walked the dogs, talked about Roz, swam in the river, talked about Roz, went to the pub, talked about Roz, shared childhood memories that only we remember, and talked about Roz. The next day, soon as my sister left, I went on line to see if there were any spaces left at the Flash Fest only to pick up a Face Message from my daughter-in-law in Poland – she’d got a massive abscess on her leg and needed an emergency op. And off life cantered in a new direction leaving the dead in yesterday as I flew to Gdansk to help with the next generation. Op done and I’m home again, post election with a brave new government, feeling hopeful as I sit at my desk up in my Hobbit House Writing Shed, ogling Flash Festival photos and resolving to attend next year come hell or high water.

And to be fair the future does look bright writing wise. My book A Learning Curve, (published by Ad Hoc Fiction) was shortlisted for the Rubery prize. It didn’t win but here’s a link to their review, which I’m so pleased about, not least because it bigs-up the amazing literary form that is the novella-in-flash. My story is in the short fiction category and you can find the review by scrolling down and looking right. https://www.ruberybookaward.com/2024-winners.html Also to celebrate this short-listing, I’m doing a giveaway on TwitteX. Here’s the link if you’d like to throw your name in the hat. https://x.com/JanKaneen1/status/1810976232709742973

Also I was longlisted for the Bath Flash comp with a micro I literally wrote the night before deadline and will therefore be in this year’s anthology, which is always a treat. Many congrats to Sara Hills who won the comp with her amazing story which you can read by following this link. Its such a fun and fabulous frenzy of a story. https://www.bathflashfictionaward.com/2024/06/sara-hills-june-2024-first-prize/

Also-also, I was longlisted for the First Pages Prize for my work-in-progress, Everywhen and the Dark Entanglement. Follow the link below and then scroll down for more deets about my story and a snippet https://www.firstpagesprize.com/2024-fiction The short list will announced next Monday. Fingers crossed! And good luck everyone.

Reet back to TwitteX for one last look at who’s posted what Flash Fest photo wise, before taking a deep breath and moving on. Jude,festival organiser, originator and all round flash guru has already posted information about next year’s festival date, 18-20th July 2025. A date not to be missed because, well, unlike flash fiction, life’s too short. But before I go, here’s the wreath I made for Roz’s coffin, made with Rosemary from my own garden and unmatched red-red roses because there were not enough of Roz’s faves left in her own garden to make a whole wreath. I mixed the few I could find with ones she chose for our garden lightyears ago when we had it landscaped. Also here’s a photo I took of her a couple of years ago. Bye Mrs Hancocks. I really will miss you, but I’m ever so glad you’re finally free.

Earlier this week, on Tuesday morning, I told my two-year-old Polish grandpeep that I was going back to England that afternoon and asked if it was ok to go with her daddee, (my son) to drop her off at nursery (which I’ve done many times before). She loves nursery and dropping her off is usually a fun, happy moment to say our goodbyes and till-next-times. Leyla grinned and said yey-yey-yey, then pointed at my coat, handed me her nursery bag, took my hand and her daddee’s, and off we went, on the short five minute walk round the corner to nursery. Once there, as the assistant came out to collect Leyla and I waved goodbye, Leyla suddenly burst into floods of tears reaching out her arms, crying nie nie nie. As my heart cracked right down the middle, it became apparent that the poor nursery lady would have to wrestle Leyla inside, which she did.

Walking home in stunned silence, I felt an entirely new emotion – weird, bittersweet, entirely new. And not entirely satisfactory. It was a mixture of being properly distressed that my beloved grandpeep was so upset mixed with a dash of something like…dare I say it out loud… gratification – that she really, really didn’t want me to go. And then just slightly after the gratification kicked in, an after-hit of serious guilt – for being such a monster as to feel the gratification in the first place. Back at my son’s home, I tried to analyse the strange emotional cocktail.

Later at the airport, trying to ignore that also nameless emotion I’ve taken to calling airport desolation, I started Googling…and found nowt, not in English or any other language. I’ve been looking for days now – fallen reet down a rabbit hole looking. I’ve tried googling it as being a grandparent thing, I mean I certainly never felt anything like it as a parent – if my kids cried whilst being dropped off, I felt only distress; I’ve tried googling it as being a sort of schadenfreude and as a compound emotion, but nothing, then yesterday I had a terrible, terrible thought, that maybe it really is just monster-me and no-one else in the whole wide world has ever felt anything like it, ever. Which is why I’m writing this.

I often write to process emotion – usually in the form of flash fictions, sometimes in the form of creative non-fiction flashes, sometimes in the form of essays, never before in the from of a blog – but this time I really could do with a bit of help. So, if anyone out there knows a word for the feeling I described, in any language, please let me know. There’s a place for comments below this post, and I’d be so interested to find out. Also, if you’ve ever felt anything like it too, that would defo also be helpful.

Anyhoo,in other writing news, I won the South Worcestershire Literary Fest CNF prize this month, and will be reading my winning flash at the festival in September which I’m very excited about. I’m also looking forward to attending the National Flash Fiction Day event in Birmingham in June where I hope to meet some of the brilliant minds behind some of the winning micros in this year’s comp. It will be such a treat to hear those micros being read aloud by the folks who wrote them.

Reet, off to do some more googling about this wordless feeling thing. I’ve found loads of interesting words for emotions that English just doesn’t have. Here are a few that have really made me think:

Sukha (Sanskrit) – genuine lasting happiness independent of circumstances

Sehnsucht (German) – “life-longings”, an intense desire for alternative states and realisations of life, even if they are unattainable

Shemomedjamo – the feeling of continuing to eat way past fullness because the food is so delish (Georgian)

Natsukashii (Japanese) – a nostalgic longing for the past, with happiness for the fond memory, yet sadness that it is no longer there

There’s even a word in Indonesian for what it feels like when someone taps you from behind on your shoulder whilst standing on your other side – Mencolek – so somewhere, somehow there must be a word for a grandparent’s happy-sadness at leaving a child who’s distressed they’re leaving. Surely? Surely…

I’ve dreamed of this, being in a tiny isolated place, with empty days full of freedom to just write and write – but as a wise woman once said, be careful what you dream of. Now I’m here, in a dear rellie’s Welsh cottage (think one up one down, without a working fireplace, just a closed-up slate inglenook with a one bar electric fire and day after day of stair-rodding rain) – in perfect weather for writing actually, with no tellie and this gorgeous view from the upstairs window, you’d think I’d be inspired, productive and pouring out novel chapters. Not so much as it turns out.

And that even though I’m seriously determined to get back into my lets-call-it-a novel after not doing much on it during my time as a carer. But as those caring days are over now, and as I entered my novel’s first chapter into Retreat West’s eponymous comp, I really feel I must get more writ. In summer, I won a place (curtesy of the Curae Prize) at the Chester Novel Prize summer school and rewrote my first chapter in the light of what I learnt – controlling the pace, making the opening seriously startling and ending at a moment that leaves readers itching to read on (hopefully). When it was proofed and polished I then entered it into said comp, to, as I have so often done with my flashes and short stories, get validation/see what someone else thinks. When it was longlisted I felt so validated I could have cried, and then when it made the shortlist I thought I must get my finger out. But writing long is so different from writing short (for me at least). One narrative thread of my novel is written in the first person, and when I write in her voice I find myself sinking into her character, like actors do I suppose. I become absorbed in who she is and how she talks, and when I’m writing as her, it’s like I’m inside the story. Being pulled, dragged, wrestled out of the story by everyday life feels almost painful, like when you’re sunk deep into an immersive book, living, breathing, existing the story, forgetting about time and what day of the week it is, and then when you finally-finally have to put it down to wee or eat or pick up the kids, it’s like being yanked out of one world into another. Thus being here, where life mostly won’t do that. But when I arrived I just couldn’t settle. I knew the first thing I needed to do to get back inside the story, was to re-read what I’ve already got on the page, but instead I read some flash. Then I wrote some flash. Then I rewrote that flash. Polished the flash. Proofed the flash. Subbed the flash. And then when that was out in the world and no longer an excuse, I started writing this. So I’m going to go now. Stop writing (and reading) something that’s not my novel, and summon the discipline to start doing what I should have done days ago. But before I do, here are some tabs and links to a few of the wonderful micros I read over the weekend.It’s not true that micros are quick to read, by the way, because brilliant ones make you read them again and again and again and again. The first one (just follow the link), I was privileged to be asked to critique before it was subbed, and it moves me more every time I read it. The last link is to one of my own micros that I read on BBC Download last Thursday night.It was a two-hour prog but you can move through it using the curser. I’m on at 1hr 6mins and 40 seconds.

Reet. I’m off. If you see me on socials in the next few days I’ll thank you forever if you either don’t make eye contact and/or tell me to get back to the novel. Thanks. xxx

https://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/this-isnt-the-start-of-the-story-by-sumitra-singam

August on Island of Evia: Forest Fires – Kathryn Aldridge-Morris

A Cinephile Reviews Her Relationship – Sherry Morris

I Love the Bones of You, Mum – James Montgomery

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hhg929

There’s no such thing as an ending because they’re always beginnings. So say the wise and they do have a point, even when the referenced ending is actual death. It’s four weeks now since Bri died – on 18th February – and its been a strange hazy unending whirl of stuff and shit ever since. Seems a crazy idea that as soon as someone dies, the people closest to them have to organise what, up north, we’d call a bit of a do when everyone’s still deep in the throws of trying to fathom out what the chuff life even is, and the apparently stark finality of someone they’ve know really well and loved, simply ceasing to exist. If I was master of the universe I’d upgrade the whole death scenario with a huge database of lost consciousnesses where you could go to chat whenever you wanted. If existence had this facility,it would have made my life so much easier. My mum died when I was four and every time someone asks me that dinner party question – you know the one – who would you invite if you could have anyone from all time and space round for chippy tea (well I am from Bolton) – my first guest is always-always my mum. The others have changed over time, Jane Austen, the team that built Stonehenge, Ann Boleyn, the Virgin Mary, but being able to chat with my mum has always been first. Missing her over the years, the huge hollowness she left would have been filled with summat which would have helped had the consciousnesses library existed. Now I’d have to invite Bri too. As a passionate ex-Catholic he’d probs have a lot of questions to ask the VM.

Anyhoo, four weeks after his passing, we’ve had a funeral (non religious), half cleared the house (it is so so SO full I wonder if this will ever end), done the first batch of paperwork and started to feel the emptiness of the space Bri used to occupy both physically and inside our heads. It feels so strange and unfathomable to think he’s gone – like when you try to imagine the vast endlessness of the universe and can’t quite.

One thing that’s helped a lot as I’ve tried to process Bri’s passing, is co-judging the National Flash Fiction Day Micro comp. When I signed up to do this last year, I never imagined that I would be reading hundreds and hundreds of micros in the wake of Bri’s death. But it helped so much, as an escape and as a joy. Gratitude to everyone who entered. Reading your brilliant flashes was a tonic at a very tricky time. And so many congrats to the winners. Each and every story is a shining jewel of micro-fiction. Also, I was cheered to see some flash mates on the winners’ list. The whole comp is read blind so it was a lovely surprise to see a collection of flash buddies unmasked.

Anyhoo, suffice it to say that Bri’s passing is a huge new beginning for me because it means an end to my time as a carer. It leaves me free to come, go, travel and focus on projects and do a lot more stuff in general. His passing has also provided a salutary reminder to seize the day. I am sixty next year and did not begin my writing journey until I was fifty. In the last ten years I’ve started and finished an MA, written a memoir-in-flash which was published by Retreat West, written a novella-in-flash which won the Bath novella-in-flash comp in 2023, written a short story collection to be published in 2025 by the wonderful Northodox Press and won prizes and comps for flash and short stories hither and yon, all of which leads me to believe that, if I have another ten good years, I could write another five good(ish) books if I pull my finger out.

I am currently 30k words into a weird novel-length creation that I’m finding difficult to write because its a reimagined historical fiction/sci-fi mash up told in three timelines across two different multi verses – think Everything Everywhere all at Once, with a non-binary version of Margaret Thatcher and that-universe’s (female) iteration of Schrödinger saving their version of events from our universe’s, entangled dark energy. I know! It’s taking every bit of brain power I have to write it, but I feel sooooo driven to get it writ.

I’d also like to embark on other projects. I did some teaching in creative writing back in 2019 before I became a carer, at our local adult education centre. Sadly, now, all the arts, crafts and creativity courses have been scrapped in favour of workplace skills, so can’t go back there. I did in-person teaching because, living out here in the fens, my WiFi wasn’t good enough to teach online. Village connectivity was upgraded last year though, and meetings and readings I’ve done since have all been fine. This being the case I intend to put together a couple of on-line workshops and see how I get on, one’s that are focussed on metaphor and stories in which the protag stays unchanged, doesn’t go on a narrative journey and has no epiphany at all. Another thing I intend to start investigating is applying for residencies. I think I’ve probably missed most of this year’s application windows but no problem-o because that leaves me loads of time to get match fit for next year’s. First thing to do, it seems, is write a CV, a writer’s CV – which feels a bit daunting, but I reckon I could get one done in a couple of days hard work. If anyone reading this has done one I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Reet then. Though I said at the beginning of this, there’s no such thing as endings I was clearly wrong because every story has one and this blog is no exception. But it would be remiss of me to end here without saying goodbye to Bri. Bri was a very private person who didn’t really like people, who had a seriously troubled childhood that marked his whole life. He could rage and roar with the best of them. After contracting covid in January he went to hospital with breathing difficulties and stayed there for four weeks, getting iller and weaker. All this on top of already complex chronic health conditions made him certain he wanted to leave this world, but at home. It was not a quick or easy negation but he was ambulanced home on the Thursday with full palliative care set up, not to get better, but to die, which he did the following Monday, peacefully and in his sleep.

I read Mending Wall by Robert Frost at his funeral because Bri loved Robert frost, and it’s a poem so often mis-quoted, and a poem we, let’s call it, debated, a lot in second lockdown. We read it and many, many more poems over his final years, but we didn’t always come to the same conclusions as to meaning. I chose Mending Wall from the plethora of poems I could’ve chosen, because it was one of the few I could finish reading without choking up. When I was practising it in the days leading up to the funeral I’d channel how cross we’d get when we were arguing which kept my tears of grief at bay. I also tried After Apple Picking and practically everything by Siegfried Sassoon who he loved as much as Frost, but could never get to the end without weeping.

Anyway here he is in 2020 on his 81st birthday when he could still get out and about. We took him down the pub to celebrate. It was a happy, sunny, funny afternoon, four weeks before Roz’s terrible stroke which changed everything over night and was really, I think, the beginning of so many endings.

Its been a crap January 2024 in our house then. We all had new covid which hit us way worse that old covid ever did, and Bri my 85 year-old dad-in-law who we co-care for is still in hospital with the after-effects of it. We hope he will be able to come home next week so fingers crossed. Spent my birthday in bed with a banging headache, high temperature and no sense of taste worrying about everyone else, which was not fun. As an asthmatic who was luckily not adversely effected by previous bouts, and who kept up-to-date with all the jabs, it seems weird that, this time, it triggered strange after effects like an awful, lingering cough and intermittent bouts of total exhaustion.Feel like I’m starting to emerge from it now though, so blogging in here with what’s been occurring writing wise by way of cheering myself up and jogging myself on. I didn’t sub much in 2023 as I’m (trying to) write a novel, but in November I had a short story published in the first Curae Anthology. Here’s me reading an extract from it https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0O3rwfIEOJ/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

All proceeds from the book go to Carer’s charities in the UK, and copies can be bought here from the wonderful Renard Press https://renardpress.com/books/the-curae/

I also had a couple of flashes published in December over at Retreat West which you can read here https://westword.substack.com/p/the-moment-of-escape and here https://www.retreatwest.co.uk/writing-santa/ A bit out of season now but I feel glad I got them subbed!

I also agreed to be a judge at National Flash Fiction Day this year. You can read all the deets here about subbing to it. https://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/index.php/2024-microfiction-judges/

I’m really looking forward to reading all the entries. Reading is such a great way to learn and it’s always a privilege to have the chance to read brand new work from the wonderful flash community.

I also had a teeny story accepted for the last ever edition of Ellipsis Magazine which I’m so grateful for. Ellipsis has been a big positive influence in my writing life, placing my memoir-in-flash second in the first longer-work comp they hosted, which I’m sure helped it to get published. I was in the first in-print publication they did and will be in the last which feels a bit like coming full circle. So many thanks to Steve and everyone at Ellipses. You will be missed.

Also I did an interview with Bath Flash about writing my ‘found form’ novella in flash, A Learning Curve, which you can read here if you’re interested in the form https://www.bathflashfictionaward.com/2023/09/interview-with-jan-kaneen-about-her-1st-prize-winning-novella-in-flash-a-learning-curve/

I was offline feeling seriously poorly when the winners for this year were announced so would like to say here, flipping well done everyone and many congratulations. It’s not easy getting your work written, sequenced and subbed and I can’t wait to read the books when they’re published.

Right knackered now. Not much of a blog but at least I got summat writ. Happy February everyone – the nights are defo getting shorter!