The Dust Lounge

Tag: vss365

  • Chicken Bones at The Molotov Cocktail

    Chicken Bones at The Molotov Cocktail

    Super stoked to share that my little story Chicken Bones was published earlier this week by The Molotov Cocktail.

    They’re a wickedly cool magazine who have long been on my dream pubs list, so this is a real smile-so-much-your-face-falls-off-but-hey-who-needs-a-face-anyway kind of moment. Huge thanks to Josh Goller and Mary Lenoir Bond for giving my story a home. You can read it here.

    Chicken Bones was actually inspired by a tweet I did for a prompt. I wrote a bit about the joys of #vss365 right at the start of the year (apparently only eleven months ago), and if you’re inclined towards the lands of micro fiction you can go ahead and play along on Twitter using the hashtag—just keep an eye out for the new prompt every day.

    In other news, you might have noticed it’s been a bit quiet on the Dust Lounge the last month or so. No excuses, apart from, well, 2020. That said, I have made a start on catching up on writing reviews for some of the fiendishly excellent books I’ve had the pleasure of reading this year. First up was Stephanie Ellis’s gloriously creepy The Five Turns of the Wheel—catch the review here if you missed it before—and there’s more reviews set to come over the next few weeks.

    In other, other news, is it really December? Already? Finally?

    Hope y’all staying safe, well and warm.

    Bonus cat pic: Ripley, chilling in the way that cats chill. Possibly dreaming of chicken, bones, or maybe both.

  • A week of #vss365

    This week I was given the keys to the FlashDogs Head Quarters, FDHQ, and was allowed to set the prompt words for (“Very Short Stories”). Every day I had the responsibility for picking a word or phrase that would then be used for a whole day to inspire tweet length fictions.

    And damn, it was fun.

    Also, jeez, there’s a tonne of words out there.

    *Oh, the decisions, the decisions.*

    For company, and to keep me in check, I made sure to bring the Beast and Robot Tam with me to FDHQ. They weren’t on their best behaviour.

    //giphy.com/embed/99a86u2qdduEM

    To give you a taste of what went down, here’s some of what happened last week. This is most definitely NOT exhaustive, but just a very few of the many, many excellent stories.

    DAY 1: #bars

    DAY 2: #cargo

    https://twitter.com/el_stevie/status/779778420427350017?lang=en-gb

    DAY 3: #digital

    A personal favourite topic of mine – how the digital world meshes with the ‘real’ world, and what might happen next.

    Even Robot Tam got involved…

    DAY 4: #Beast

    Dedicated to the grumpy cat that lurks in my house.

    https://twitter.com/Elaine173Marie/status/780363750490636288?lang=en-gb

    DAY 5: #spot

    DAY 6: #circus

    DAY 7: #Spark

    A mini heads-up to my upcoming novel Grind Spark. I opted against going for the word ‘grind’… you never know where that could end up.

    And all of these are just a tiny sampling of the joys of . I’ve handed the keys back to FDHQ for now, but head over to twitter and get your fine-selves joining in.

     

  • The FlashDogs are back and this time they’re even shorter

    It’s been a while since the FlashDogs have been out and about, prowling the digital streets, releasing fine paper beasts of flash fiction into the wild and raising money for charity.

    This is sad, because I missed them.

    But it’s good, because they’re each up to other things, other projects, and that is all very exciting.

    But now they’re back with a twitterfied version of even shorter fictions. This time they’re working with the VERY SHORT STORY. Stories short enough to fit in a single tweet, but big enough to make you laugh or make you cry or make you scream.

    They’re bringing daily prompts, y’all just see the prompt, then cast your very short story into Twitter with the hashtag .

    Simple, right?

    What, you want rules?

    Okay…

    Hmmm…

    *Digs in pockets, discovers dog-eared wad of post-its*

    VERY IMPORTANT UNOFFICIAL RULES OF

    First rule is: You do not talk about FlashDogs .

    Second rule is: Wait, what? Forget the first rule, shout about it, join in, retweet, make your VSS’s and spread them liberally across the internet-lands.

    Third rule is: Someone yells stop, goes limp, taps out… umm… think that might be a different game.

    Fourth rule is: Everyone’s invited, the more the merrier.

    That’s all I’ve got in my pocketses (honest), but check the FlashDogs website for how it actually works.

    Here’s just a small sample of what’s been going down in the first week…

    https://twitter.com/tinoprinzi/status/774146389123006465

    https://twitter.com/WolfRich93/status/774197415725457408

    Your turn – get out there and join in @FlashDogs #VSS365