Dodo Au Go-Go

In the endless magic of the universe, the nebula was a lake of blue mist with clouds of gold rising above it. Dots of white sparkled and shimmered. Cradled and nurtured inside the nebula, the little spirit was azure in colour. It was being born into being. It was being sung to by the stars, and magic and energy hummed and danced through the colours. The little spirit was growing closer to its birth. Then one day, the stars sang extra loud, the nebula of blue lake and gold clouds brightened, and all the white dots pulsed eagerly. A new figure appeared through the stars, running easily towards the nebula. It was dark-blue and dog-shaped. It had pointy, triangular ears and its tail was a little apostrophe, and its big heart cast a silver sheen all around it. It greeted the little spirit with flat ears, a bobbing tail and quiet joy. “I have come from where you are going. I’m your guardian spirit and I will guide you to your new home, and I will watch over you.” In the ...

As you may have seen from my recent posts , Sarah Brentyn is doing a #Flash4Storms initiative for hurricane relief. Many people have already shared their words, and to ensure those wonderful wordsmithers without blogs are also able to contribute their words for a great cause, I'm honoured to be able to post some more fantastic flash fics here. ---------- Bobbi Bowman ( @BobbiBowwoman ) What if you don't have bootstraps? ---------- Michael Fehr ( @FehrMichael1 ) The sun was setting. Maria didn't know if she had the strength to hold on until morning. She clung desperately to the highest branch she could reach above the swirling floodwaters. In the pitch dark, it was the nose of the rescue dog that guided the boat to her perch. ---------- Stephen ( @GallifreyGamgee ) Lora looked lovingly at her ghostly boyfriend, the only one in the Ethereal Planes who could help break the curse by sacrificing himself. ---------- Kevin Odinsknot ( @Odinsknot ...

A little while ago, in early February, my favourite Twitter-based microfiction game ,  @FridayPhrases , generated the following  #FP  effort from me: Her suitor cuts her at the opera, blatant, cruel. She is publicly silent & slips a snake onto his coach. He likes games; she doesn't lose I quite liked it and thought there might be scope for a longer story sitting in between the words, waiting for the telling. But even better, the brilliant @HopeDenney2 quite liked it too. When we realised we both thought it could be developed into a longer story, we, of course, had to give it a go! So we did, and we each came up with very different interpretations. Hope's story is immediately below, and mine is further down the post. Enjoy!

How a piece of micro-fiction that had no right to be anything more, grew up to become a published piece of flash-fiction - with my reflections on the writing process along the way. I received some wonderful news in June. A flash-fiction story I submitted for a special edition of the SirensCall ezine was accepted, and was published at the end of June. Oh, all right, all right. Since you insist, the link to SirensCall ezine issue is here: http://www.sirenscallpublications.com/pdfs/SirensCallEZine_June2015.pdf The most amazing thing about this story is how it happened.

This story was born out of a piece of FridayPhrases micro-fiction on the theme of "Only human". (I love FridayPhrases and have gushed about it at length here ). This was the micro-fic that I initially came up with on Twitter:  "Frankenstein,Dracula & TheMummy glared at the Bouncer who said "Only humans." He got a philosophical lecture abt being human & a thump." This image tickled me enough that

In 2014, Twitter came alive for me when I discovered word prompt games to inspire fiction, micro-fiction, micro-poetry, fun, and Twitter communities of like-minded creatives. (I wrote about this earlier this year). Now, as 2014 comes to an end, I wanted to collect all my best pieces in one place, starting with my favourite compositions for FridayPhrases (known on Twitter by its short-hand hash-tag, #FP).