For those of you that enjoy flash fiction, why not take a look at Flash-Frontier. Not just because I have a story in the latest edition Doors, although I do, but because it’s online and jam packed with great flashes.
My piece is called Yours or Mine? and is only 250 words, which is less than a 2 minute read so as you can imagine, it gets straight to the point.
photo credit: irio.jyske “Doors and stairs” via photopin (license)
I’m really pleased to have a short piece called Reclamation in the Winter 2020 edition of Sein Und Werden (Being & Becoming).
This is an online literary magazine of experimental prose, poetry and artwork that seeks to merge and modernise the ideas behind Expressionism, Surrealism and Existentialism.
They set out their manifesto as:
‘Sein und Werden’ is a quarterly online (and occasional print) journal of arts and letters. The title comes from the Expressionist concept of Sein und Werden – ‘being and becoming’, the notion that we are born as nothing and only through experience do we become who we are (an idea shared with Sartre in his work ‘Being and Nothingness’). Using certain techniques of cinematography to create lengthened shadows, twisted stairways and a distorted mise-en-scène, the Expressionists were able to depict a nightmare world that would later influence a number of other cinematic developments, such as film noir, as well as leading artistic movements. One such group who owed much of their technique to Expressionism were the Surrealists, who played with these concepts to create bizarre images of the subconscious, making use of dreams and automatic writing. The goal of ‘Sein und Werden’ is to present works that evoke the spirit of the Expressionist, Existentialist and Surrealist movements within a modern context, which I like to call ‘Werdenism’.
The theme of this edition is “Of Human Bondage” and there are forty pieces in all so plenty to keep you busy for a while – enjoy.
Inventing characters, their motivations and their development in a world that is futuristic takes a bit of thought. As some famous non-science fiction authors have shown when they turn their hand to the genre it takes more than a few bits of wizzy technology and a simple twist of history to create a believable story.
So, it’s always a pleasure to come across new techniques for creating and developing characters and worlds. But, that’s only one of the reasons I enjoyed the “bentoism” of Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler. It’s also a good way of getting perspective on life and its many complex choices.
What is it? Well, in essence you weigh up the pluses and minuses of a decision for the now you, the now us, the future you and the future us.
There’s more about it on the bentoism website and you can hear him being interviewed on the Futures Podcast.
photo credit: Bennilover “Halloween and Vergie’s pumpkins, weird and wonderful and very, very creepy” via photopin (license)