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ICYMI my latest (and probably last of 2024) story. 👇👇👇

Does anyone have experience applying for Arts Council Project Grants? I'm pondering an application (for something tip-top secret) and am wondering about the best way to answer some of the application questions. Any help gratefully received.

"When he died the man owed me £35 in petty cash and that was my first thought when I heard about The Accident." A wonderful breathless story from Hannah Retallick as one of my HC picks for Bath Flash Fiction

"I’d never heard of GODETIAS until I started listening to Countdown. Never watched it neither cos I was at school… or bunking off, if you want the truth." Love the tone and use of form in this one from Gemma Church (she/her) in Bath Flash Fiction, another of my HC picks.

"Her nieces arrive first. All three of them, mid-twenties, clad in looping scarves and the guilt of being absent since their mid-teens." My third place Bath Flash Fiction pick from Samantha Kent, a piece that spoke to me at a personal level.

"You wake in the carpark of a long-forgotten Little Chef. In the chain-link there are clumps of things that once had feathers and tails and chickweed is coming up through the cracks in the concrete." I was immediately drawn to the lyricism of this piece from my very first read.

"But this is your ex-husband’s house, not the dim lit mausoleum on Red Square, and those guards, eyes the colour of dill, mouths downturned sickles, your daughters." Huge congratulations to @kazbarwrites! Wonderful to discover who wrote this brilliant piece.

“I lost my bones in an accident,” he tells me. “Now I’m only of skin and flesh. Do you have any idea how impossible it has been to sit up?” Weird and wonderful writing from Ecem Yucel

"We wake one morning to a faint melody. When we open the windows, the drapes reach toward us, and music wafts in like the scent of honeysuckle" A beautiful piece from David Henson that grows so wonderfully from beginning to end.

"We, the scrawny fawns from the fields stuck still, blinded by the sun-bright headlights hurtling our way" Such a philosophical, moving piece from Abbie Doll full of startling imagery and repeating notes

Hard not to resists a story called "When an Orange Goes to School for the First Time." Brilliant writing from Marie-Louise McGuinness in @FictiveDream that brings the emotions so clearly to life and builds its tensions so effectively. Ooft!

"Then, the divers would glide across the water, bend at the waist, and, kicking their legs into the air, swim straight down" Always wonderful to see another #WriteBeyondTheLightbulb piece out in the world. Great writing from @mfitzwrites

"House of routine, walls of enormous blankness. Even the wind chimes numb." Lyrical, rich writing from Mandira Pattnaik in L'Esprit Literary Review - always wonderful to see a historical piece of flash; one that transports me to revolutionary France no less! lespritliteraryreview.org/2024/11/03/con…

Favourite examples of experimental form in flash fiction to help Lauren out?

These look so wonderful. Jeanette is such a talented artist.

Wow! Love this from Nora Nadjarian So evocative, so much originality of language, love the personification of the sea, the way the narrative shifts from one paragraph to the next