Tag: Festive Flash and Other News

Festive Flash and Other News

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Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. One image directly from Pixabay. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes, as were the pictures of my local post box with additional festive “toppers” as I believe they are known.
Will shortly be taking a few days off for Christmas so my next round-up on my website will be a week today, Friday 30th December. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. Back soon!

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Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today

It is with great pleasure I share Festive Flash and Other News for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. I share two new flash tales as part of this and have a look back at my writing year.

I share the links to the recent fun and fabulous Three Minute Santas show hosted by Hannah Kate on North Manchester FM and the link to the Flash NANO podcast I was on with Wendy H Jones as an episode of her excellent The Writing and Marketing Show a little while ago. It has been an interesting year and I hope 2023 proves to be equally or more interesting, writing wise. Hope you enjoy the post.

Festive Flash and Other News

 

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Hope you have had a good day. Finally got around to doing some present wrapping – yes, I know! Plan to finish tomorrow (probably just in time for my Christmas food shop delivery!). Trickiest one to wrap for? My dog – because she is with me all the time. Managed it though!

Just to flag up I will be taking a break over the Christmas weekend from social media, my blog posts etc. I hope to have another blog round up out on Friday and then again on 30th December. I hope you have a lovely Christmas and that there are plenty of books for you under the tree!

Am looking forward to a social meet up on Zoom next week with the good people from the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group. Three of us had stories on the Hannah Kate Three Minutes Santa show recently (North Manchester FM). Well done, everyone!

BookBrushImage-2022-12-21-9-3344I’ll be sharing a couple of new flash stories as part of my Festive Flash and Other News post for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Link up on Friday. See above.

Am loving joining in with the carols on Classic FM though so far I have resisted the temptation to sing the alternative words to While Shepherds Watched. (While Shepherds washed their socks by night, All seated on the ground, a Bar of Sunlight soap came down, and they began to scrub. My late mum always sang that version with glee! I will almost certainly sing the alternative version on Christmas Day itself and think of Mum).

Talking of treasured memories, give some thought as to which memories your characters would treasure and why. Have they remembered things correctly? What actions do their memories encourage them to do and what are the consequences? There are story possibilities there. Also, I find a character sharing with me a s a reader a fleeting thought tends to make that character seen more real to me though the memory they share should have bearing on the story.

Couldn’t resist re-sharing these pictures of my local post box. Well done to whoever made these. I’ve been seeing a number of pictures like these throughout the UK – very cheering!

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Am looking forward for a social catch up with members of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction group next week.

Am already starting work on a potential fourth flash fiction collection (my goal would be to have a first draft of that ready by this time next year, God willing). Would like to try to enter more flash competitions next year too.

Hope your festive preparations are going well (and it would never surprise me if there are several flash fiction pieces inspired by such preparations! I hope you have fun writing those up!).

Hope there are plenty of flash fiction collections amongst this lot!

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Quick shout-out to say the submissions button is back on Friday Flash Fiction. See link

Must admit I don’t know if I’ll get to submit anything this week given my usual writing day for this is Sunday – and something else is happening on that day!

But you can still treat yourself to a great read of the stories on there. Regular submission of work is the best way I know to increase your chances of having acceptances – and this applies no matter what you write.

Submitting regularly to FFF has got me back into writing the 100-word drabbles again which is great. They were my way into flash fiction writing in the first place so there is something pleasingly symmetrical about this!

Screenshot 2022-12-22 at 20-26-04 Submissions

One of the great joys of writing flash fiction at this time of year is in sneaking in some festive references. For example in my Every Little Detail from From Light to Dark and Back Again, I refer to someone checking a certain list “(twice mind you)”. That’s a nod to the song Santa Claus is Coming to Town (and my favourite version of that is still the one by Springsteen). I love reading passing references like this in stories by other authors – it’s great fun to get these in and, for me, a fabulous way to play with words.

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Fairytales with Bite – Fairytale Season

Now December and January is the time for the old fairytales to be revisited by people like me. Pantomime is a fabulous way to enjoy the tales again too. I often visit my local amateur theatre company for their annual panto – always great fun.

Fairytales and pantomime are a great match up because you need outstanding characters. You need a hero/heroine, a baddie, magical support (usually the godmother or the genie), evil to be overcome in the end, and for a happy ever after ending. Generally the fairytales do deliver here! And it helps if you already know the stories well because you appreciate the gags more. Or at least that’s what I’ve found to be the case!

My plan this fairytale season is probably to visit my local panto (they’re doing Pinocchio this time) and to catch up with some “alternatives”. I’m a huge fan of the much missed Terry Pratchett and I love his take on the origins of Santa story with his Hogfather. I think it could be argued A Christmas Carol is a kind of fairytale (albeit aimed at at a much older audence than normal) and I’ve already had the joy of rewatching my favourite adaptation of it – by the Muppets!

Of course you can’t beat reading the original stories – and they are definitely not twee and/or just for kids!

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This World and Others – Festivals

Does your setting have festivals at certain times of year? Are there stories to be shared, which only come out at this time? Special food and drink? Is everyone expected to join in? Are there special shows/services, pageants etc?

If your world doesn’t celebrate anything in particular. Why is that? Terrible history and everyone wants to forget it? Could you explore the dangers of not commemorating something? Or look at a time where there had been festivals but there are not any longer? How were the festivals removed? What happened to those who wanted to continue with them after they’d been stopped?

A festival can also show something of a culture as well as of its history so how does your world does this? Is there a culture which dominates the others, whether deliberately or by histoical events ensuring that this culture is the “top one”? A festival is also brightly coloured and light is heavily involved so how does your setting do this?

I love Christmas. My Christian faith means it does mean a great deal to me and I love the carols and festive music. On that note, may I wish you a Happy Christmas (and maybe give some thought as to how your fictional people would greet and treat others when it comes to their festivals).

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Broadcast News and Stories in Song

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Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Many thanks to Hannah Kate for kind permission to use the Three Minute Santas photo. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Weather turning cold again here. Christmas preparations going okay but still much to do! Still time for stories and writing though….!

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Facebook – General

Posting early today as am off out to my church’s Carols by Candlelight village sing-along later. It’s a lovely informal event with plenty of Christmas cracker jokes in between the singing. Last time we held this event was in the week of Christmas 2019. It is so good to have this back!

Those who follow the Friday Flash Fiction website – look out for the results of the Christmas competition soon. Normal submissions will resume in the New Year I would’ve thought. (Please note the normal submissions button isn’t there at the moment on the understandable grounds the editor needs time to count up the votes for the competition and get the results out!). I’m preparing pieces to submit in January to give myself a bit of a head start here – always useful to get some drabbles written!

I did get my submission in for the Writing Magazine Grand Flash Prize a while back, following my own advice to take some time off the official closing date. Good luck to all who have or are about to have a go at this one – deadline is the end of the year.

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Hope you have had a good start to Christmas week. Looking forward to sharing my Festive Flash and Other News post for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. There will be a couple of new flash pieces in there from me plus I take a look back at some highlights from my writing year.

Will start winding down on the writing for a few days from Saturday. Looking forward to doing plenty of reading over the Christmas break too.

I often use this time of year to ensure I’m up together with my blogs and have started drafting others for the start of the New Year. I don’t just keep a stock of stories to hand!

And I’m looking forward to a social evening on Zoom for the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction group later this month. It will be a nice way to wrap up our writing year there.

Am also getting my January newsletter ready. If you’d like to sign up for hints, advice, stories etc do head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

 

It’s my turn on the Authors Electric blog today. This time I look at Stories in Song. The carols inspired me here as so many of them have a clear narrative but there are other songs which have long been favourites of mine due to their lyrical quality. See what you think via the link and do send in your favourite stories in songs in the comments.
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Hope you have had a good day. Many thanks to Hannah Kate for including my story, First Night on The Round, on her Three Minutes Santas show on North Manchester FM today. Hope to be able to share a link soon but meantime you can use their Listen Again service to find the show.

Please note Hannah’s show is in two halves for the benefit of the Listen Again service. I’m first on for Part 1. Great fun listening to all of the other stories here too. Well done to everyone included in the show. And do check out festive flash fiction – it is great fun to write, read, and/or listen to bit don’t just take my word for it. Give it a listen here!

Part 1 here.

Part 2 here.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Twist endings work especially well for flash fiction. The impact is greater given the restricted word count. I love writing humorous ones, the “character gets comeuppance” type, as well as the character coming up with something unexpected kind, which is not quite the same thing as getting their comeuppance.

In my George Changes His Mind from From Light to Dark and Back Again I end the tale with the dragon given their viewpoint on the proceedings. Great fun to do and a lovely “left field” ending to that tale!). So think about what you want your twist ending to do and how you want it to impact on your readers.

I do this and find writing this first, then working out what could lead to it works very well. It means I stick to the point and everything that proceeds before my big reveal has to make sense and be logical, even in the most fantastical of settings.

Framed Flash Collections

19th December – Second Post
Oops! Almost forgot to share my latest YouTube video. Hope you enjoy New Experiences.


It was lovely at the Carols by Candlelight service yesterday. First one since Christmas 2019. The singing was fantastic.
Do your characters like to sing and, if so, what would they sing? What songs have special resonance for them?

Resonance comes into my flash fiction too. I have to know where my characters come from to be able to write them up at all. Some of their attitudes and actions have got to resonate with me, even if I still don’t approve. You don’t necessarily need to like your characters. You do have to understand them to be able to get into their heads and so write up their tales though.

Have been doing a little admin in adding books to my website book page and my Book Brush Reader Hub. That’s a nice task – Evergreen – an Anthology is now on there. Plus I’ve notified ALCS and my Author Central page has been updated by Amazon. They are usually pretty quick to do that when you notify them.

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A week to go to Christmas and I’ve enjoyed one pre-Christmas treat – re-watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. Fabulous film and to me one of the best adaptations of Dickens’s classic tale. Lots of lovely little moments as the film goes on (Miss Piggy giving Scrooge a piece of her mind is just one of them!) and, of course, little moments is what flash fiction is about. We focus on the single most important thing, which is a little like looking at the cameo and focusing on that rather than on taking in everything about the main film. (That’s the job of the novel!).

Writing flash fiction is a great exercise for any writer for another reason – it does make you focus on the single important thing and it can show you perspectives you might not have considered before. Later on this evening, I’m reading a wonderful poem called Shepherd by Lisa Debney for the Carols by Candlelight service at Abbey URC, Romsey.

The poem is lovely and it focuses on one viewpoint – that of the shepherd – but it shows a perspective I had not considered before I read this poem. (There can be some links between poetry and flash in that both forms need to use words to specific and deliberate effect and we are using the word count restrictions to their best advantage).

Flash Fiction focuses on THE important aspect of a character's life

My story on Three Minute Santas, hosted by Hannah Kate on North Manchester FM, was broadcast today. 17th December – and see links above.  For this submission, I had to submit a story which came in at a maximum of three minutes. So how to do it? Simple! I used Zoom to record myself reading my story, I ended the meeting with myself, and Zoom then turns the file into an mp4 file. Not only can I play it back to hear how it sounds, I’ve got the timing of my story right there!

Mine, First Night on the Round, came in about 2 minutes 50 seconds. When I first started writing, I used Audacity to play back stories of mine so I could check if the words flowed as well as I thought. Doing this is a great way of picking up on clunky dialogue etc. I see it as part of my editing process.

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Goodreads Author Blog – Santa’s Reading List

Now we all know many of the presents on Santa’s sleigh are books. (The rest I suspect would be chocolate, toys, socks, and stuff for pets!). But what would Santa himself want to read after all of those deliveries have been done or would like to read if the books existed? We all deserve to put our feet up with a good book after all. (He would have already read A Christmas Carol and The Nativity stories of course and would re-read them each year).

Lounging in the Sun – would make a change from his usual environment, yes?

How to Bake the Perfect Mince Pie – suspect he might leave this book as a present when what he is offered as refreshments is below par. Bound to come across the odd shoddy few.

Reindeer Management – What You Need to Know – wonder if he’ll find a cure for Rudolph’s red nose here.

Postman Pat – Any of these classic children’s stories would go down well with the great man. Would make a change to read stories from someone else with deliveries to sort out.

Getting Away From It All – You’d want to after dealing with the workload for another year.

The Haynes Guide to Sleigh Maintenance – The Haynes manuals are very well known especially in the UK. They even have one for the Star Trek Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon so why not do one for Santa’s sleigh?

Hope you have plenty of book shaped presents under your Christmas tree this year!

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