Flash Bang Wallop! (but quieter)

As people who come here will know, I am not always a fan of flash fiction. Reading a piece on its own and if its good then I get it. But reading a whole collection and it's just not enough... like eating a whole meal of hors doevres and wanting a proper meal instead. Whenever I think of putting a collection together, I can't help but want them to hang thematically somehow. A couple of years ago I wrote 51 stories in flash that were about my late dad. The unpublished collection is called 'Art in Heaven' and it hangs together because each story presents a piece of my dad and the whole acts as a memorial portrait of him. And I wrote, here on this blog, a collection of 120 or more flashes that created a portrait of a village and held a small village mystery within the threads of the stories.

I must admit that I do have fun writing flash fiction, though as often as not for me a flash is a brainstorming exercise and my better ones yearn to wear bigger pants and walk taller. I have turned many flash fiction pieces into full stories even turned one flash fiction into a full length novel. Flash, when I do it, is like sketching is for an artist.

I don't think I am alone in thinking flash fiction often falls intellectually and imaginatively short of what it needs to be. The quirky and the anecdotal and the small gag, things that so frequently feed flash fiction, is not enough for me.

For these reasons, I don't often shout about my flash fiction and don't feel completely comfortable when I do. So, whispering here, I am saying that three of my flash fiction pieces have recently done rather well... in competition terms... with a win and a 2nd place and a shortlisting for a nice anthology.

There, said it. Now I don't want to hear any more about this. Ok