LAUNCH DAY

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

Had a lovely but very busy launch day looking after grandfolk in Sidcup, so didn’t get time to blog. Am doing the same again tomorrow but will blog again in the evening when I get home but wanted to record the wonderful Bluesky post my publisher made today about Hostile Environments which really touched me. I’ve been watching copies wing their way out into the world as when the day allowed (which wan’t often), but I’m going to have a proper look now before going to sleep. Having a third book in the world feels like something big and I am very proud of these tiny stories and so grateful that they are now out and about.

When Shape and Blank Space are Storytelling Too

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

Day three of my week of blogs then to celebrate publication day for Hostile Environments (tomorrow) and today’s plant of the day is the globe courgette which you can see growing here in a pot on me patio outside the writing shed. I’ve never grown a cucurbit in a pot before – they usually go into the ground in beds as they get so big, and I’ve never grown globe courgettes before this year at all. Never saw one before this year in fact, and now they seem to be everywhere – happen someone hybridised them last summer and are knocking the seeds out cheap. The cucurbit family which includes pumpkins, cucumbers, melons and all manner of gourds is very easy to hybridise – in fact if you gather then keep the seeds from year to year, you never know what you’ll get the following summer. They have male and female flowers that are fertilised by flies that spread the pollen. No fertilisation and the fruits just stay small and drop off, fertilised and they swell into whatever. I planted these globe courgettes in a pot because I forgot to label them as seeds in the greenhouse and wasn’t sure what fruit they would yield until they started to appear and was pleasantly surprised when they became these lovely shiny deep green beauties. They are very good for stuffing and roasting – even the skin in crispy delicious done in the air fryer. What I didn’t expect when growing them, was the early advent of the wee cyclamen underneath. These gorgeous pinky petals usually only poke through much later in the year, bringing showers of pink and red and white to garden as the days start to darken. I’m thinking maybe the shadow cast by the huge green zucchini leaves tricked them into thinking it’s October and so out they popped – and they look so lovely there like a younger, sibling basking in the protective shade of their older sister – which lead me to thinking, on this book-publication-day eve, how stories can change depending on where they are placed inside a book and how they are set on the page. Flash fiction of all the prose forms is the one most aware of how it exists as a form or a shape I reckon. Not always though – sometimes a great flash is a great story written in the (brief) form of a story with a beginning, a middle and an end (in that order). But so often it’s not. So often flash sits on the page aware of the page – like a poem does, making its shape part of the story telling even. In recent times this sort of flash has been called hermit crab flash because – well you can see why – because hermit crabs borrow their shells – but I like the term hybrid flash better because quite often non-conformist flash fictions don’t borrow a shape , they are the shape. The storytelling, the beating heart of the story – its life and soul comes from the shape – it’s not an afterthought or tacked on afterwards. Here’s one of my flash fictions that does what I just described. How it sits on the page, the blank spaces in between the words even, the pause and moments of quiet, the emptiness are all part of the intrinsic storytelling. And so too is the juxtaposition of the form and story which at once jar against each other and meld together – a bit like the lovely cyclamen and the huge courgettes – strange but satisfying flower bed fellows. But before you read it – I just remembered that, yet again I’ve not mentioned that bloody PhD application thang I’ve been banging on about for three days now. Tomorrow it will have to be…

How To Keep The Hunger At Bay

By Jan Kaneen

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees then go pick apples. In the wet’s best, on the darkest day of autumn, when everything smells of mold and mushrooms and the garden looks like rust and cinders. But don’t let the fruit ruin waiting for perfection.
  2. Stand under gnarled branches catching raindrops, marveling at how young the skin on your palm looks, not like the windfallen wrinkles everywhere else.
  3. Place apples in appropriate receptacle. I use a trug made from sheets of birch. It’s got a long flat bottom so the apples lie side-by-side without bruising when I hurry down garden to get out of the weather.
  4. Wipe fruit carefully so skins shine like wintery cheeks, like Georgy’s used to when he came inside for a warm on snowy days and the stove was lit.
  5. Don’t peel. A little skin will give the edges a ruddy tinge, and anyway, it’s good for you – full of roughage and it makes your hair curl – least that’s what I always told him when he used to pull his face.
  6. Slice into cored crescents that look like rose petals and place into buttered tart dish. I arrange mine in circular swirls that coil inward and make a pattern that looks like forever.
  7. Make caramel by heating butter and sugar. Most recipes say not to stir but I do because that’s the bit he loved best – standing on his three-legged stool at the cooker in his Winnie-the-Pooh apron, watching the crystals dissolve into liquid gold, like alchemy.
  8. Add four pinches of cinnamon. One for mummy, one for daddy and two for Georgy, then a squeeze of lemon. An edge of sharpness is necessary to cut through the syrup.
  9. Pour over apples then take block of shop-bought pastry from fridge. This is a matter of preference of course, so feel free to adapt to personal circumstance, but forty-odd years of following this recipe has taught me life’s too short for homemade rough-puff.
  10. Roll thin and place on top of apples, tucking in edges like a child’s blanket, then bake for fifty minutes.
  11. As scent of caramelized apples creeps like yesterday into warm kitchen, pour a glass of something lovely and remember – when you planted the sapling a lifetime ago, when it meant nothing and you were so impossibly numb-and-sensitive-at-the-same-time you couldn’t feel anything though everything still managed to hurt – opening your eyes, birdsong, hearing your own name… and a year later when you finally scattered ashes round the reedy stem… and the year after that, harvesting the first crop.
  12. Smile or cry. It doesn’t matter which.
  13. Take tart from oven and cool, but not too much. Grief, hope, love, remembrance – all are dishes best served warm.
  14. Eat as many slices as you need, savouring every last bitter-sweet mouthful until you’re so tip-top full to the brim you think you’ll never be able to manage another bite.
  15. Take another bite.

When Rejection is not Rejection

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

So, here is the second of my all-week blogs to celebrate publication day for my new collection Hostile Environments on Thursday. Exciting news, copies are now winging their way to people who pre-ordered, so that’s good and today’s plant of the day is cuckoo pint or lords and ladies, or snakes head, or bobbins, or starch root or naked boys or adders meat or adders root or friars cowl or Adam and Eve or arum maculatum. I love a plant with many names – it speaks of loads of uses and/or an interesting appearance, or the ability to tweak human imagination. Where I come from in Bolton it was always called cuckoo pint so that’s the name I’ll stick to here. Above is a little photo (not from my garden) of the plant before the berries form which is meant to look like male and female genitalia (thus the lords and ladies and Adam and Eve names). I can just about see it at a stretch. Not sure about the derivation of the other names though would LOVE to know the adder-ish ones which must be lost in time. If anyone knows please fill me in, or maybe make up an origin story? The only other cuckoo pint name I do know the origin of is starch root – thus called by nuns in the sixteenth century who ran laundries. They used to dig it up and boil the root to extract the starch which was good for stiffening ruffs when such neck gear was all the rage amongst the rich and powerful. Cuckoo pint grows all over the wooded parts of my garden and though loads of folk think of it as a weed – a poisonous weed at that – I love them. They speak of stories and old wives tales, and folklore lost in time. And they really come into their own in winter when those red red berries shine like Yule lights in the long dark days and, though the berries are poisonous to humans – not so with birds, to whom they provide an important source of wintry nutrition. It’s funny how things can come into their own, in different times and places. Like my wee story Bagsy Blobsy No Back answers. I wrote this story way back in 2016, about my childhood, growing up in the 70s. I sent it to various mags and comps where it got rejected and/or long-listed nowhere. I rewrote it and it longlisted but didn’t shortlist in Flash 500. I then placed it into my memoir-in-flash, The Naming of Bones which was published in 2021. I read it (and other stories) at the online, in-covid lockdown launch in April 2021 and was overwhelmed by the love this story got. I then read it on BBC radio Cambridgeshire where they played it multiple times, so much did people enjoy its summertime nostalgia.

In 2024 I entered it for the brilliant South Warwickshire Lit Fest flash creative non-fiction comp – here’s a link to their site https://www.southwarwickshireliteraryfestival.com/

(you can enter published stories into this comp which I highly recommend as they are a friendly, lovely lot and do brilliant feedback as well as inviting winners to read at the event) and you guessed it – it won! So you know – stories can have afterlives and futures and other incarnations that you might not think they’d have – and rejections are just steps on the road to that magical moment of acceptance.

Just realised I haven’t mentioned the PhD application I said I’d write about today in yesterday’s blog. Guess it’ll have to wait till tomorrow then, but in the meantime, here’s me reading Bagsy Blobsy no Back Answers, the recording from that first book launch. https://youtu.be/GbKiP_DziQo

Weeks Like These…

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

…don’t come along very often for writers of strange, surreal, non-conventional and not all that commercial fiction. That is to say weeks in which your third book is published, so going to blog every day till Sunday, by way of celebration.

Been thinking about the industry that is publishing a lot in the run up to Thursday (launch day for Hostile Environments) – and its a weird old business I reckon. Though I’m on my third book, I’ve not got an agent and to be fair I’ve never really tried to get one other than via entering stories into comps that agents might see. And the longer my agentless status has gone on, the more I’ve become totally fine about it because at the end of the day I don’t write to eat. If I did it might be different but I started writing 10 years ago to sort my head out and see if I could. And it really worked for me and my mental health which has made me super grateful and I find it proper strange that so many people in this weird society we live in, want to monetise everything, even creativity. It’s like nothing has a purpose without the wonga it generates, and loads of people I know quite well still ask how much I earn/expect to earn from my writing, what I’ve sold, what I’ve won prize-money wise. And I’m not gunna lie – when I first started writing, the prize winning was great fun, and vindication too – but the longer I’ve gone on, the more I just like winning to get my work read, not necessarily sold (though all prize money is very gratefully accepted). My new collection of dark short stories and flash fictions is never going to sell a million copies. There I’ve said it. It’s short fiction, and weird, unconventional short fiction at that. Agents always seem to want to know when they’re asking for pitches, where books would sit in bookshops and which best sellers they’re most like. Strange that something new and entirely different is never wanted. Not at first. I have no idea where Hostile Environments would sit on a book shelf in Waterstones other than in the short story or flash fiction section. Or maybe on a table with other titles by indie publishers. When my publisher, Northodox decided to publish my book, they knew they would not be retiring on the proceeds. They took it on because my words spoke to them, because they loved my stories and wanted to get them read. And that’ll do for me. I want to get my stories read too. In fact its super important to me that they do get read, because I don’t really think a story’s finished till its been shared with other minds. Flash fiction demands a lot of its readers – with its concision, brevity and implication. Flash readers have to really lean in and join metaphorical dots – so much so, a well crafted flash can mean one thing to one reader and something totally different to another, and it’s that meeting of minds that I love about being a writer of it. So you see unread flash fiction really is unfinished flash fiction to my way of thinking.

Also. This. Imagine that in 100 years someone finds one of my books in a charity shop book sale say, or cyber-mines it from a long dead website, or digs one up from a ruined library in the aftermath of a war we have not yet foreseen – and they read one of my stories and it fires their neurones and their brains spring into action making synaptic leaps and other connections – and though I will be long dead and my atoms will be scattered, my mind will have connected with another human being over swathes of time and from beyond the grave, just because I wrote some stories and Northodox had the presence of mind to publish them in print and digitally. People think quantum entanglement is mind-blowingly weird and wonderful – but so is reading and writing -i t’s sorcery, and time-travel and telepathy all at the same time.

Anyhoo, back on planet earth, last week, I did an interview with the folk at Northodox about writing and creating. Here’s the link if you fancy having a read https://www.northodox.co.uk/post/author-interview-jan-kaneen and if you do feel moved to pre order a copy of Hostile Environments all the deets are there.

But in the meantime, here’s me doing a reading of one of my flashes that I just recorded especially for this blog. It’s not from Hostile Environments as I explain on the vid, but as I’m going to post every day this week, thought I’d release some of my stranger flash fictions into the wild too. Here’s the link to where it appears online as text ,if you prefer https://theshortstory.co.uk/words-and-sayings-by-jan-kaneen/ and below is my recording which carries a trigger warning with ref to toxic societal gender assumptions and uses sayings that would cause offence in their usual contexts, but hopefully not in this one, though they might well still be shocking. Reet that’s it for Monday. See you tomorrow when I will talk about the new project I have started to pursue – applying to York St John to do a creative writing PhD. Until tomorrow then. Oh yes and If you were wondering about the pot of flowers at the start of this post. Going to do a ‘flower of the day’ each day here too. I love growing flowers and veggies as well as stories and today I’m celebrating teeny lobelia and how though they might be small, they bring humongous joy.

Exciting Writing Times

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

Seldom do I write posts here that are only about writing, I chat about life, the universe and random stuff-and-shit that’s been happening to me, the family and the world in general, and all of that has, of course, still been going on since last I blogged – Grandpeep birthdays, another dose of covid, harvesting the first of this year’s crops – cherries, courgettes, beans and new potatoes, the huge success that growing pak choi has been (seriously plant some even if you only have a window box – 100% germination rate, you can cook it like spinach, add to soups or eat as a super delicious salad and you keep cutting the leaves and they grow back again and again.) And during all this local stuff the world beyond the garden has continued to be bat shit crazy with wars, escalations, billionaires running riot over the planet, power mad potentates killing at will and elected leaders still putting their fingers in their ears when anyone mentions the word genocide, but, as I set this page up all those years ago to talk about my writing journey, I reckon focussing on a book when I have one out is what I should mostly do right here right now so…

My new book Hostile Environments will publish on 7/8/25 and is available now for pre-orders. Above is the cover and here is the pre-order link https://www.northodox.co.uk/product-page/hostile-environments-paperback which takes you direct to the paperback ordering place at Northodox. There’s more deets there about the book but in a nutshell it’s a collection of dark short stories and flash fictions that each speak about what makes a place safe or dangerous and how this is as much about who you are and who rules the roost than actual geographical location. Addressing contemporary anxieties like the climate crisis, gender identification, the need for the me-too movement, BLM, the growth of populism, fake truth, the impact of the pandemic, the perils of navigating cyberspace and social media, these stories explore how one person’s sanctuary can be another’s hellscape. I will also be having an on-line Zoom launch on 14/8/25 from 7-8pm. I’ll post more details including how to book a (totally free) ticket to this soon but to whet appetites, it will include readings from Hostile Environments, a Q&A sesh and a super-brief 20 minute writing workshop. It has been proper hard work putting this book together and not at all straightforward what with having to get my weird story shapes and conceits onto the page and every single tale having an accompanying illustration.

Still its very nearly done now thanks to the wonderful peeps at Northodox, to whom I am so grateful and whose 5th birthday it was in June. To celebrate, they had a birthday bash in Leeds Central Library as part of the Leeds Lit Fest and I travelled back oop north to do a reading, including a flash from Hostile Environments which was good practice for the launch. Here’s a photo of me at the gorgeous gothic space that is Leeds Central Library, and another afterwards down the pub with a constellation of other Northodox authors who are just the most lovely and talented bunch of humans. It really was a fun and happy event.

There is however still a lot to do before Hostile Environment’s publication day, highlights of which include my youngest son fighting in a Mauy Thai bout on Saturday which (heaven help me) I’m going to London to watch, then I’m off to Gdansk on Sunday to help with grandpeep Leyla, then its the Flash Festival the weekend I get home, and before any of that, I’ve got to do final, final, final text revisions, so better crack on with those right now and stop all this blogging. I’m not going to sign off though without saying how grateful I feel for all these exciting writing times – a moment of personal joy in this crazy mixed up and often vicious world. All this and I haven’t even mentioned another writing iron I’ve just put into a very different scribing fire, more of which next time if everything progresses according to plan, but suffice it to say that this writing life that I took up at the age of 50 to sort out my mental health and see where it led has brought such joy, affirmation, brilliant friends, a whole new raft of knowledge, a different perspective on the world and, shortly, three published books of which I am seriously proud. I really am so so grateful.

Sprung

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

So, frost scorched mornings like in this first photo are already fading into the past as the garden magnolias launch the most magnificent of springs. The veggie patch is all prepped for a new year of growing which will be different from past plantings now grumpy husband’s blood tests have confirmed his borderline, pre-diabetes diagnosis. No more oceans of spuds and rivers of tomatoes for us (well less spuds and tomatoes that’s for sure, maybe puddles instead of floods) and for the first time ever: celeriac, pak choi and turnips which my probably over-extensive research has suggested are much better carb wise and not too difficult to grow in our soil and climate. And it’s been a useful distraction having positive research to engage in and the garden to look to in these crazy, world-tilting days that have been Jan-March 2025.

The world we all share has shifted so radically in that time – political friends have become enemies, truth has given way to opinion and out and out lies, as leaders (elected and otherwise) have twisted words to try and convince us that war (trade and conventional) is justified behaviour, and for the good of the people rather than the good of those in power. During these weeks, the news has been almost impossible to watch without weeping tears of impotent rage, and it has helped me immensely to focus on nature, to watch the garden still growing and the sun still rising. Last time I posted here I did my first ever vlog which included reading a story I wrote about fear. When I read it then, on US presidential inauguration day, boy was I full of fear (as well as a cold) and my fear is as palpable as my sense of foreboding on that January video. I’m no less fearful now, perhaps more so since things I feared might happen are happening, but as the nightmare continues to unfold, it seems to me that liberals like me can no longer float round their gardens sitting on fences real or metaphorical. We have to say what we see and who we stand with whilst we still can, use words not to twist truth but to magnify it.

So here’s my truth – the ‘war’ in Ukraine is not a ‘war’ but an invasion, and it’s not an invasion of Russia into Ukraine but of Putin into Ukraine. The soldiers fighting Putin’s invasion are mostly North Korean’s with no choice, and I don’t see why ordinary powerless Russian’s should be implicated in Putin’s madness. And the war is Gaza is not a war either but an invasion too, then a genocide. I’m in no way condoning what Hezbollah did. They massacred innocent civilians, held innocent people hostage then murdered many of them anyway. Terrible. Awful. Dreadful. But I fail to understand how the solution to that from Netanyahu was to unleash armageddon on innocent civilians, but this time in their tens of thousands – innocent, powerless people – women and children, doctors, peace keepers. And my being anti-Netanyahu armageddon is not being antisemitic. That’s just another word trick used to try and shut people up from telling the truth. It totally riles me, this word distortion, that is used these days, to obfuscate – like when billionaire-owned presses who’s main job is to sell stories, report peace demos held against what is happing in Gaza as pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli, when they should, more accurately be saying that the demos are pro peace and anti murder. News outlets really should be held accountable for the storms they stir up using antagonistic language, and ordinary people need to learn to read between their lines – to see how they are being manipulated. Seriously, non of it makes any sense to me. Do these men (and they nearly are all are men) think war is better than peace or selling copy more important than the truth?

Maybe I don’t understand because there’s a fundamental difference between those in power and ordinary people like me. Maybe a little bit of power is never enough. The longer I live on this wee blue planet the more I’m sure of the veracity in the saying, power corrupts. And if power does corrupt then perhaps absolute power corrupts absolutely – drives you power crazy and proper mad. Maybe even seeking power interferes with your moral compass? That would explain why Trumpian spokespeople lie every night on TV. Are they doing it to get power? Are they doing it to protect their potential to get more power. Do they even know they are lying? Have they somehow deluded themselves that the lies are real. And what about JD Vance now he does have power? I read Hillbilly Elegy a couple of years ago and find it inexplicable that the self-aware narrative presence that wrote that memoir is the same consciousness that went to Greenland this week, toe-cringingly waving at non-existent crowds and saying things like Denmark hasn’t done enough to keep Greenlanders safe. Can’t he see how weird that sounds out of the mouth of a person who lives in a place that doesn’t provide its citizens with universal health care? And can’t he see how he looks like a sleazy protection racketeer ? You guys need us to keep you safe from bad stuff happening. Bad stuff like his administration muscling in to take them over one assumes.

I have no solutions to any of this, other than to teach real, complete history so people can learn from what happened before, but since I can’t make that so, and because there is little else I can do other than write my version of the truth in blogs and stories, that is what I’m going to do. I started this blog in 2015, to document my writing journey. Since then I’ve had loads of stories published, won some comps, done a masters in creative writing, had two books published with a third on the way this August, but blogs must, like veggie patches, adapt to changing circumstances – so this year as well as growing pak choi and writing about writing, I’m going to write about freedom, truth and the liberal inclusion I believe in. And I’m going to read some of my flash fictions that tell my version of the truth. To get started, here’s my rerecorded inauguration day story, not told sadly or down-heartedly like in January, but told boldly, stoutly and defiantly. There must be loads of Americans living inside the enfolding Trumpian dystopia who wish they weren’t, and loads of Israeli’s who don’t want any more innocents killed, and loads of Russians who don’t want Putin as their absolute Tzar but can’t say so or he’ll have them Novichoked or chucked out of a window. I might have no power but I do have a voice.

A first ever Vlog to mark this dull dark Inauguration Day

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

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.

Elections, Truths and the Existential Significance of Wheelie Luggage

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

So the day is finally here, when the US electorate choose between making a normal human being head of state, or a narcissistic, misogynistic felonious fantasist. Not a tricky decision you’d think from the outside in, but we in the UK have no room to talk, I mean, Boris Jonson.

So I’m zoning out. Or trying to, because it’s too excruciating, especially when you have loads of competing inner voices and not a crumb of power to influence events. I manage no mind-changing logarithms, neither am I a modern-day influencer with bazillions of social media followers – I don’t even have a vote – which truly sucks because this time it does feel like the outcome will have real implications in what used to be called the free world. So best to keep me head down, thoughts and voices under control and hope for the best, I reckon. Thus far, I’ve walked the dog, dug up the summer tomatoes and swept up and green-binned my own body weight of autumnal leaves – working not thinking. Working not thinking. Big mistake those leaves though because, as I looked into the kaleidoscopic eternity of strobing yellows and crimsons and crispy ochres, my back-brain started, whether I liked it or not, to consider the nature of reality, truth, power and belief. ‘The truth is a bloody chameleon’ it thought, ‘if half the US electorate think voting for Trump is a good idea.’

‘A good idea,’ my front brain postured. ‘predicated on their believing there is genuine truth in his proclamations that he’s smart, brilliant and going to get rid of every single problem and (dare I say) Make America Great Again.

And they defo do believe in him, in the face of logic, reason, evidence, science and facts – believe in him in a religious way maybe? Like the Taliban in Afghanistan right now believe it’s wrong, evil even, for women to have agency over any aspect of their own lives, to be educated, speak outside, even hear each other. Seems crazy, but believe it they do. Not that we have much room to talk here in the lets-call-it, west. I mean it’s only 150 years ago that in the UK married women had no rights to property, their own kids, their own money. Mid Victorian women had no vote, no rights and no agency over their lives – and that’s less than a nanosecond ago geologically speaking. We really should remember that when we find it hard to reconcile ourselves to what we currently think is unconscionable. In my own grandmother’s lifetime, women were seen as fundamentally weak mentally and physically, way stupider than men, either rampant for sex or totally asexual and with a wandering womb that needed to create children or it would float upstairs and drive its owner insane (the actual derivation of the word hysterical) – a constructed narrative line believed by most British men and women not all that long ago. In my own lifetime rape in marriage was not a crime

‘But why do humans make up stories like they do?, continued my back-brain as I shovelled the leaves trying not to think about the Trump conundrum. ‘About ourselves and gods and monsters? Stories that become much more than stories, that become reality because they are made into reality by the people who come to believe them?’

‘Yes’ agreed my front brain, falling into the trap, ‘because humans can make their imaginings reality (skyscrapers, i-Phones) which we can all agree, only existed once in someones imagination. In fact, is reality and therefore truth even an absolute at all? Do either even exist outside the human mind? Is a tree still a tree if no-one sees it?’

I looked at the leaves, pretty sure,they would still exist if I didn’t. An undeniable truth therefore. So far so good. And I’m sure because I used my senses, my firsthand experience to be absolutely certain. I breathed in their musky aroma as I shovelled a heavy spade-full into the wheelie, to magnify the point.

‘But what about believing in things beyond firsthand experience? Like events you only see on the internet? Or what about ‘evidence’ that comes out of the mouths and minds of people who want to control others? Surely they’ll say anything to convince others of their truth. And what about faith? That’s a right bugger faith is, because not only does religious faith claim truth exists beyond reality and human perception, it says that using your firsthand evidence is bad. To have religious faith you need to set aside primary experience and simply believe despite the evidence, to just take a leap of well… faith.

Too. Many. Voices. And too many questions. I counted backward from ten to shut them the chuff up then wheelied the bin down the path. When I let myself think again it was cautiously, about something safe, like wheelie bins.

Wheelie bins didn’t exist when I was a kid, we just had tin dustbins full of mixed rubbish, unsorted plastics, food waste and not a thought about recyclables. The bins were way too heavy to lift but no matter because binmen came two by two every week, right up the backyard and carried them out and tipped them into the bin lorry for you. And never mind bins, said my unquenchable back-brain, there was defo no such thing as wheelie luggage. When you think about it reality didn’t require wheelie luggage in 1969. Before the wars, anyone who could afford to travel had serfs or servants to carry their massive trunks for them. Anyone who was someone didn’t lug luggage – that was for underlings and so wheelie luggage just didn’t exist.. Why would it, especially since said servants and their luggage struggles were supposed to be almost invisible so as not to annoy their high-minded masters. Fast forward to 1980 and everyone in the lets call it free world could afford to go on grand(ish) tours – well have a couple of weeks at leisure in Europe – and suddenly luggage lugging was seen, experienced. It’s not that the truth changed – it was just reevaluated. Like women not being capable of running their own lives. Yup its a weird chameleon, the truth, reality, control of our own environment.

I left the wheelie bin on the road determined to stop pointless pondering, determined to go inside and write till all this election malarky is over, thanking my lucky stars that I write fiction to channel these random, powerless over-thought thinkings. This aftie, I’m going to fall back into my work- in-progress – a let’s-call-it novel, sci-fi about all these issues – fake truth, manmade belief systems and the stories we tell ourselves when trying to make sense of the inexplicable. Here’s some info about it. I entered the start of it into a comp in the summer and it was shortlisted – mine’s the ninth one down https://www.firstpagesprize.com/fiction-shortlist

Also below is a flash fiction I wrote to channel other emotional mind meanderings (follow the link under this paragraph) which came second in this year’s Cambridge flash prize if you fancy distracting yourself from current events by having a teeny read. But be aware, it carries a content warning, https://theshortstory.co.uk/words-and-sayings-by-jan-kaneen/

Writing is such an important part of my mental wellbeing. Hostile Environments, my collection of short and short-short stories that comes out next August from Northodox Books, is full of vented fears – there’s even a story in it about Donald Trump who, so there can be no room for doubt, I hope will not be president of America when that story is published, in fact I’m praying to all the gods I don’t believe in he’s not. True story.

Not Being There

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

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.