A bit of a duplicate title, but when I did the index to the stories, it may me realize the titles were confusing when I was doing them ahead. Especially since I don’t know what the next story will be…yet.

Story #6 ended up being science fiction.

It is for an anthology call, and it was hard to pin down exactly what the low hanging fruit would be. Usually it’s obvious what everyone will submit. This time, I assumed it would be the “finding” of the anthology topic.

The title turned out to be the hardest part of this. Initial titles were:

  • Obsession
  • The Watchers

Both are in the story, but when I paired them with the cover that also fit the story, it was “Nope, nope, not happening.”

Just simply the wrong image. People would think it was a stalker story.

So it was add four sentences so I could connect to the new title, “Lake of Whispers.”

I also wrote two flash fiction stories. In searching for places to send my stories, I keep running into pro-markets for flash fiction. So I took a pop-up for flash fiction and then wrote the two stories:

  • Treacherous Cliff – Mystery, for the Alfred Hitchcock contest. I’ve placed honorable mention before…would like to do better.
  • Broken Agreement – this one was inspired indirectly by Nora Roberts. I was reading one of her books and there was a phrase that read “damn beagle” and read it as “demon beagle.” Science fiction.

Most writers do flash fiction as a slice of life–just a scene where something happens.

But flash fiction, even a 250 word story, must have all of these:

  • Character
  • A problem
  • Setting
  • Five Senses
  • A story
  • Validation

Both stories were fun to write, particularly from the challenge of getting the setting and five senses in.