Yeah, I was supposed to post this three days ago. If you want to read some of the sordid details of why I’m so behind, you can do so over on my personal blog. Posting is likely to be irregular, unfortunately, over the summer, as I’ve taken a software-development contract, because it’ll be nice to have some significant money saved. Even so, I’m still writing, as regularly as I can, and hopefully this week was an anomaly because of the holiday and the personal disruption that threw my life into a tizzy.

Still, better late than never.

Each Friday, writers post on twitter a link to a short-short story they’ve written, marked with the tag #FridayFlash. This week, I posted an old character sketch from about 6 years ago, Abigail White, inspired by a news story I heard on the radio.

Of the rest of the stories that were posted last Friday, here are my…

#FridayFlash Favorites for July 2

Either there are a lot more stories that meet my overly opinionated standards, or else I’m getting soft. (Probably the latter.) Of 110 stories posted last Friday (including the 89 that made it onto the official #FridayFlash Report for July 2), here are my 17 favorites, listed in no particular order.

• “Rain” by Diandra Linnemann — We all dream of winning the lottery, even if we don’t play it. Be careful what you wish for…

• “Fast Food” by Laura Eno — Took a second look at this quick one-two funny with a cute punchline.

• “Pink Slip” by Elijah Toten — A stark commentary on the purpose of every individual.

• “Crowning Glory” by Jane Travers — I don’t know what happened between them, but hell hath no fury like true love… Superb!

• “Unforgettable” by Icy Sedgwick — Icy’s back to her usual excellence, with a story about a woman who falls in love with a dilapidated ballroom.

• “Finding Comfort” by G. P. Ching — Companionship isn’t always about sex and being in love.

• “Close Encounters with Goldfish” by Alison Wells — A man with a model spaceship, a son, a pair of goldfish, and sometimes we lie to protect others, and sometimes to protect ourselves.

• “Panda Slippers” by David Masters — Hey, maybe I should try this the next time the women in my house are late getting ready for church. Or… maybe not.

• “On The Button” by Rachel Carter — Reminds me of some of the news stories over at @FreeRangeKids. Just a little overprotective, are we?

• “The Crab” by Jen Brubacher — A girl sees her father cook a crab; and then what’s in the chill chest?

• “The Cell” by Denis Vaughan — A woman locked in a cell, learning to take back control of her life.

• “Not Every Victory is Sweet” by Leah Petersen — Leah pulls out another story from her archives, an intense tale of defiance and initiative.

• “Jealousy” by Louise Broadbent — Everyone needs attention, even the not-battered woman, and will do whatever they have to in order to get it.

• “Larry’s New Girlfriend” by John McDonnell — A charming story about an alien who finds love in the strangest way.

• “Judgement Day” by Heather Lloyd — Everyone has to be good at something, and everyone is.

• “Six Minutes” by Maria Kelly — A cherished moment between a mother and daughter, a heart-wrenching story.

• “Gone in 60 Seconds” by Denise Covey — In free-fall at 11,000 feet without a parachute… Yeah, that’s how my week felt, too.

Note: To be selected as one of my #FridayFlash Favorites, the post must be a genuine flash story, not a chapter in a longer piece, a series of one-paragraph vignettes, or anything else. It should have a beginning (conflict), a middle (thickening), and an end (resolution). Not necessarily a happy ending (though I do enjoy happy endings), but whatever conflict the story introduces at the beginning, it must resolve at the end. No fair building up suspense and then stopping in the middle of the story, just so you don’t have to figure out how to save the hero in 1,000 words or less; that’s cheating. The story should also be a single scene, because multi-scene flash usually does too much “telling” and doesn’t “show” enough to engage me in the story. (And scene divisions stop the flow, which is usually a bad idea in flash.) While I do browse Twitter for #FridayFlash posts, the best way to get me to read yours is to put it on the #FridayFlash Collector. I judge posted stories according to my own preferences; your mileage may vary.

Till next week, and…

Keep writing!
-TimK