In 2012, I have been working steadily away on stories for a third short story collection, but I haven’t yet got to the stage of making many subissions to magazines and anthologies.
I have, however, had several short-short stories aka flash fictions published by the excellent New Zealand-based monthly flash fiction magazine Flash Frontier, whose editors Michelle Elvy and Sian Williams have done a great job since starting the magazine in late 2011. They pulled together an outstanding lineup of authors for the international issue, as well as all the New Zealand authors who have been published in Flash Frontier since its inception – as shown by the list of contributors.
I was very pleased to hear from the editors recently that they have nominated my story “Aftermath”, which was first published in the April 2012 issue of Flash Frontier, for a Pushcart Prize, together with five other stories from Flash Frontier. It’s always nice to get this sort of recognition, and I hope to have further flash fictions in Flash Frontier – and, I hope, in other venues too – next year. Thank you, Michelle and Sian!
Aftermath
After the party we drove the last guests home down streets already filling with the desperate and dangerous. The return journey was arduous, our new armour plating proving its worth more than once.
Mother was surprisingly chipper. She gave me a peck on the cheek and sent me upstairs to help with the blackout curtains. “Everything’s going like clockwork,” she said. “Like clockwork.”
Standing watch in the upper gallery was tedious. I will not deny that I had fallen asleep at my post when the first wave of attacks began. We heard the chattering of Sir Charles’ machine-gun; we heard it fall silent. I learned later that only the massed charge of the under-gardeners, who had been concealed in the ha-ha for such an eventuality, repelled the attackers from our gates.
In the morning, we dragged Sir Charles’ body to the petunia border for burial. We stopped for a minute’s silence to mark his passing. Then Mother blew a single, mournful note on a party favour, and we returned to the task of further reinforcing the gates.
That is probably the funniest après-apocalypse flash fiction I have ever read, Tim. Congratulations on the nomination too.Though I do wonder what Americans will make of such a very British piece coming from New Zealand!
Thank you, Penelope! To the pure, all things are pure, and hence the Americans will be unfazed.
Congratulations! A most entertaining piece.
Thanks, Janis!
Congratulations, Tim! A wonderful achievement. Enjoyed the ha-ha!
Thanks, Rachel.I've always wanted a garden with a ha-ha: our current back garden does have a bit of a depression in it where the plumbers took out some old and broken pipes, but it's not quite the same, somehow.