Epic Fantasy Competition at Dark Fiction Magazine, and the Art of the Very Very Short Story

Pop on over to Dark Fiction Magazine and you'll see a rather nifty flash fiction competition has just been announced: they’re looking for epic fantasy stories of a thousand words or under, and there are actual cash prizes! So you are cordially invited to dust off your broadswords, polish up those magical artefacts and get your dragon on. Full details (and a rather excellent picture) can be found here.

 

I do love the perversity of fitting an “epic” fantasy tale into less than 1000 words. I was lucky enough to have my flash fiction piece “Milk” selected for DFM’s Twelve Days of Christmas Special. I had to work really hard to get the story down to a very zippy 1000 words and because of this it remains one of my favourites- it’s as tight as it can possibly be, and every small piece of it pleases me. It doesn’t hurt of course that the very lovely Kim Lakin-Smith read it out for me and did a fantastic job. If you’d like to hear it (don’t worry, it isn’t actually that Christmassy) nip over here and press play.

 

Being a big fantasy fan I’d love to give this competition a go myself, but since I’m helping out DFM with their slush reading at the moment, I suspect I’m not really allowed. ;) However, I am very excited to see what people can cram into that neat little word-space, and I think we’re going to see some very interesting stories.

News From Dark Fiction Magazine

As some of you will know, I've worked with Dark Fiction Magazine a number of times in the past, both as a narrator and as a writer with stories featured in a couple of episodes (the flash fiction short "Milk" read with grace and aplomb by Kim Lakin-Smith remains one of my proudest moments). These days I'm helping out a bit more, so I'm here to tell you that the magazine is open again for submissions of previously published stories- fantasy, horror, science-fiction, weirdness and terror and thrills, they're after them all!

I also have this message sent direct from the Dark Fiction offices themselves (carved into the bare rock of a mountain, you know, and staffed by the evil flying monkeys who thought the Wicked Witch wasn't wicked enough)

You already know that Dark Fiction Magazine are always on the look out for fiction of the creepy and fantastical variety- did you also know that we’re after artwork, too? And voices. Not in a steal-your-voice-in-exchange-for-a-nice-pair-of-legs way (we’re not Hans Christian Anderson) but we do like to have a good variety of interesting voices for our stories, so if you’re an artist or a narrator who could see their work being featured on DFM, please do send us examples of your work via our submissions site.

Hurrah! Get submitting.

The Twelve Days Anthology from Dark Fiction Magazine

So it's here, on the darkest and spookiest day of the year- twelve stories to captivate, amuse, and give you the shivers. My story "Milk" is the first one on there, narrated by the lovely Kim Lakin-Smith (go find out more about that talented lady here: http://www.kimlakin-smith.com/ ) and I am tremendously proud of it. I've been full of the flu for the last two weeks so I wasn't able to read the story out myself (I sound rather like a bucket full of poorly frogs) but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as Kim's voice suits the story so well I actually fidgitedy about with glee while listening to it. I'm also proud of "Milk" simply because I rather like it myself for once, and I don't often have a lot of affection for my own work.

Go here to listen to some excellent short fiction: http://www.darkfictionmagazine.co.uk/episode/twelve-days-anthology/

I'm working my way through them all now, and it is a marvellous little treat of wintery goodness.