Time overdue for another 7 of my favorite flash stories from #FridayFlash. I’m a month behind, but still reading through the short-short stories authors have posted on Twitter each Friday, marked with the tag #FridayFlash.

This past week, running on coffee fumes. I posted a new story, “Perhaps to Dream,” with a woman who faces the difference between the career and what she wanted when she became a career woman. For Read-an-ebook week, I released two new free, short ebooks, small collections of short-short stories: “Pine” and 7 Other Short Romances and “Disorder” and 7 Other Flashes of Character. Download them or read them at my free ebooks page. Also remember, my Love-Idiot book and Ashes of Courage book are discounted on Smashwords for another day; and check out the other books being promoted for Read-an-ebook Week on Smashwords.

Without any further distracting links…

7 More #FridayFlash Favorites

(in no particular order)

• “Boo” by David Robinson — … or “How to Deal with a Ghost.”

• “The Ouija Board of Love” by Eric J. Krause — A slightly corny, but entertaining, romantic story, with a cool twist. Might have been worthy of the Love Boat. (And not meant as an insult.)

• “Lucky Noodle” by G.P. Ching — A stormy story with a nice twist. Eat more noodle soup. Soup is good food, and good for your health, too.

• “A Boy’s Best Friend” by Emma Kerry — A touching story: simple desires, a scruffy pup falls in love with a new boy.

• “The Time Out” by Adam Byatt — Horny parents: definitely a conflict of interest, eh?

• “20:49” by Anthony Schumacher — A clandestine rendezvous, a squirt of adrenaline, a painful choice.

• “The Blue Versus The Grays” by D. Paul Angel — A little different than I usually post here: an X-Files-ish civil-war story.

Note: 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 preferred flash fiction qualities; your mileage may vary. 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 to avoid figuring 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 I usually dislike in flash.)

Till next week, and…

Keep writing!
-TimK