To celebrate both their tenth anniversaries, the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and Kobo Writing Life held a ten-word story contest. (For those in the US, Kobo = Kindle for most of the world). Winners were announced at the London Book Fair Saturday, Apr. 16. My entry was one of the ten finalists. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the winner or a runner up, but I was really pleased that it placed in the top ten.
If you aren’t familiar with such short stories, the model often mentioned is the six-word story attributed to Ernest Hemmingway:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
If you sign up for my newsletter, you can read my entry and seventeen more ten-word stories I wrote last month as I was working on my contest entry. I compiled them into a short ebook that includes a general discussion about short-short stories (flash fiction), using “baby shoes” as an example, and commentary on each of my ten-word stories. If you are interested in flash fiction, the commentary might give you some thoughts for when you read other short stories or write your own.
Don’t worry. If you’re just interested in reading the stories, I’ve made that super easy. Each story is on its own page, so you don’t have to scan through a bunch of commentary if you aren’t interested in that. Although I suggest taking a little time between stories, you can read them all in a couple minutes.
Although most of the stories in my collection are general fiction, there are a few fantasy stories and one western. I’ll add more stories to the collection as they come to me, and will try to write one specifically for my sci-fi audience.