Brief Encounters

Although there’s rarely (if ever) any money involved in these ventures, the spread of Web sites welcoming short stories or “flash fiction” is really quite impressive. John Rickards, the British author of Burial Ground and The Darkness Inside, reports today that he’s launching a new Webzine, Degeneration Twenty, in January and is currently looking for submissions.

“Now, I’ll come to write proper guidelines and put everything much more firmly into place at a later date--January’s a way away,” Rickards writes in his blog, “so I don’t really need to worry too much about it for now. Suffice it to say, it’s flash fic--500-750 words tops, and as far as content goes, I’m looking for anything (a) in some way, no matter how much of a stretch, loosely connected to crime/mystery/thriller stuff, and (b) that does something a little bit different to the stock in trade we all deal in with novel length fiction.” More details are available here.

Meanwhile, Aldo Calcagno, who already operates a microfiction site called Powder Burn Flash, has created a second venue “for writers wishing to explore their stories more in-depth.” This new space, Darkest Before the Dawn, “is open to short-story submissions up 10,000 words in length.” First up on the page is “Misguided Flight,” by Claire Dickson.