Diane Simmons, "William Prichard & Co"

Diane Simmons is a writer, editor and Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day (UK). She has been widely published in magazines such as New Flash Fiction Review, Mslexia, Splonk and FlashBack Fiction and placed in numerous flash fiction and short story competitions. She is the author of four published novellas-in-flash: Finding a Way (Ad Hoc Fiction), An Inheritance (V. Press), A Tricky Dance (Alien Buddha Press) & William Prichard & Co (Arroyo Seco Press). You can read more about Diane on her website here, and connect with her on X/Twitter @scooterwriter.

About William Prichard & Co
William Prichard & Co is a novella-in-flash. The novella starts in 1886, and in 33 flash fictions, it follows 65 years of the Prichard family and its perambulator business, holding up a mirror to society and the changes in attitudes, industrial practices and politics, as the family move from the Victorian era to the 1950s.

You can read more about William Prichard & Co on Diane's website here. Below, you can read one of the flashes from the book. 

From William Prichard & Co, by Diane Simmons

Perfectly Put  

1891

‘You look magnificent, Bertram,’ William says when his son walks into the breakfast room.

Bertram bows, removes his cap and examines it. ‘That’s the school crest,’ he says, pointing to the badge on the front. He runs his fingers over the four blue ribbons that criss-cross over the cap. ‘I like these too.’

‘You’re a lucky boy – it’s a marvellous school. You must make sure you work hard – I will be relying on your brains when you’re old enough to join me in the perambulator factory.’

Bertram giggles and sits down at the table. He displays no signs of nerves for a boy about to start his first day at prep school and tucks into toast and scrambled egg with enthusiasm. He is an impressive child – so clever and self-assured. 

As William eats, he allows himself a momentary day dream and imagines an adult Bertram at the helm of the factory. Such a move would enable William to have more free time to pursue other interests such as politics. William Prichard M.P. would sound rather fine and it would be satisfying to help halt the rise of the blasted Liberals; factory owners like himself should not have to put up with constant government interference. His employees are paid well and have excellent working conditions; he hears no complaints.

His younger son calls out to him and William looks across at him and smiles. Hugh is an exceptionally good-natured child, a pleasure to be around. But he doesn’t have Bertram’s confidence or academic promise. It’s surprising – the operations he endured as a young child meant that he’s always received plenty of attention from the family.

‘When I’m big will I work in the factory?’ Hugh asks. 

‘No, no. It will be Bertram. It is always the eldest who follows their father into the family business.’

Hugh screws up his forehead. ‘But Clara is the biggest. It should be her.’

Bertram laughs and digs his little brother in the ribs. ‘Girls can’t do things like that, silly. They need to stay at home to look after the men and children.’

William lifts his son’s cap and ruffles his hair. For a seven-year-old, Bertram has such a grasp of things – William really couldn’t have put it better himself.  

Diane Simmons, "A Tricky Dance"

 

Diane Simmons is Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day UK, and a former director of Flash Fiction Festivals UK. She has been widely published in magazines such as New Flash Fiction Review, Mslexia, Splonk and FlashBack Fiction and placed in numerous writing competitions. Finding a Way (Ad Hoc Fiction), her flash collection on the theme of grief, was published in 2019 and shortlisted in the Saboteur Awards in the Best Short Story Collection category. Her historical novella-in-flash An Inheritance (V. Press) was published in 2020 and shortlisted in the Saboteur Awards Best Novella category. Her new novella-in-flash, A Tricky Dance, was published by Alien Buddha Press in January 2024. You can read more about Diane on her website here and connect with her on X @scooterwriter and Bluesky @scooterwriter.bsky.social.

About A Tricky Dance, by Diane Simmons
A Tricky Dance is a novella-in-flash. It is set in 1970s Scotland and follows spirited teenager Elspeth as she navigates the challenges of friendships, family life and ambition, discovering that even in the face of adversity, life can hold endless possibilities.

You can read more about A Tricky Dance on the author's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novella-in-flash. 

From A Tricky Dance

Dancing 

Rory McMaster corners me after double geography.

‘You ken how we had a go at the Gay Gordons the other day?’

‘Aye, you were great.’

He does one of his wee bows. ‘I’ve been learning Scottish Country Dancing at the church hall every Thursday. We do Highland Dancing too. Do you want to come along?’

I hesitate and he goes bright red. 

‘No’ like that,’ he says. ‘I mean I’m no’ asking you out or anything …’

I smile, tell him I know what he meant, but I don’t answer his question. I’m fed up of having to make excuses for not doing things. And this is dancing. I bloody love dancing. I sigh. ‘How much is it?’  

‘It’s only 75p a week,’ he says.

I can’t imagine thinking 75p was nothing. I get £3 for doing my paper round and I’ve to pay for everything out of that. Maybe if I took on a Sunday paper round too? ‘What do the girls wear?’ I ask. 

‘Your gutties and a skirt would do.’

I picture myself turning up in my gym shoes and school skirt, imagine the looks. ‘I don’t think I can.’

When I get to school the next day, there’s a plastic bag on top of my locker. Expecting something gross, I peer inside – it’s a pair of dancing pumps. 

I hound Rory down at break. ‘I can’t take these,’ I say. ‘They must’ve cost a bomb.’

‘They were my sister’s,’ he says. ‘They don’t fit her anymore.’ 

I examine the pumps again. There’s no sign of any wear – there’s not a single mark on them. He must think I’m daft.

‘That’s nice of your sister,’ I say. I stare at the pumps, then at Rory’s worried face and grin at him. ‘See you there on Thursday,’ I say. 

‘Seven o’clock,’ he says, and grins back. 

Kathy Hoyle, "Chasing the Dragon"

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Kathy Hoyle, whose novella-in-flash, Chasing the Dragon, has just been published by Alien Buddha Press! 

Kathy Hoyle writes short fiction and flash fiction. Her work can be found in publications such as Fictive Dream, Lunate, Ellipsiszine, The Forge, and Emerge Literary Journal.

She was the winner of The Bath Flash Fiction Award, The Retreat West Flash Fiction Competition, came second in The Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award, and the HISSAC Prize and third in the Cambridge Flash Fiction Prize. Other stories have been listed in various competitions such as The Exeter Short Story Prize and The Fish Short Memoir Prize.

She holds a BA (Hons) and an MA in Creative Writing and is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Leicester. Chasing the Dragon is her debut novella-in-flash.

About Chasing the Dragon

Chasing the Dragon is a visceral, searing novella-in-flash that explores the complexities of familial relationships in a small-town community reeling from the after-effects of the Vietnam War. 

When two young men return home from war, both deeply troubled, their mothers must deal with the terrible fall-out. 

Willy is addicted to opiates and suffering from PTSD. Chester, no longer able to freely express his thirst for blood and combat, seeks other ways to wreak havoc on those around him. And their younger cousins, TJ and Cal, desperate to emulate their hometown war heroes, head off into the woods, only to find there is terrible danger there too. 

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, Bihn, who is terrified of dark spaces, has lost his parents, his home and has nowhere to turn, except the GI camp, where he vows to make himself useful, not knowing that he is entering into the darkest place he will ever know. 

You can see more about Chasing the Dragon here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novella-in-flash.

From Chasing the Dragon, by Kathy Hoyle

Dark Spaces

Bihn does not like dark spaces.

Every day, he digs with grandmother, making holes to hide in, like rats. 

When the soldiers come, Bihn is forced inside. His uncle always sits too close. Bihn can feel sharp whiskers brushing his cheek and smell his uncle’s fetid breath. Fear clutches Bihn’s heart. He cannot help but cry. When they crawl out into the bright sunlight, Grandmother whips him hard with bamboo. Too much noise, she hisses. 

Bihn goes with grandfather to the river. He sees a rare blue lotus flower and bends to cradle it in his small hands, mesmerised by its beauty. A bullet whistles overhead. He looks up to see grandfather fold into the water. Blood pools on the surface. His uncle scoops him up and carries him back to the village. His whiskers scratch Bihn’s cheek.  Grandmother beats him. Your fault! Your fault! 

Bihn steals away at night. His eyes are good, he knows the way through the shadows. He moves, quick and agile, through the dark spaces. Rain pounds his face. He must not arrive shivering like a starving dog or they will not keep him. He must be useful. 

His sister, Thùy Linh, answers the door. She looks like a movie star, kohl-eyed, rippling crimson dress. She brings him inside, holds him to her. She smells like apricot blossom. Mai is pinched and angry. She screeches at Thùy Linh, No! No kids here! He shows Thùy Linh his bruises. Thùy Linh tells Mai that Bihn must stay. She lays out a bed for him in a dark space. Bihn does not like dark spaces.

Mai hisses at him, keep your eyes and mouth shut! He knows how to keep quiet. Each night he falls asleep to the rhythmic thumps of the bed.

Bihn runs errands. He collects the opium, learns how to crush it, how to clean the pipe. He is useful. The GI’s give him Hershey bars. They laugh, and drink and throw the girls around like hollow dolls. Afterwards, the girls hold them while they cry for their mothers. Bihn brings the pipe. The men lay on Thùy Linh’s bed, eyes glazed while Bihn cleans up the mess.

Thùy Linh has a special friend, Willy. She hums to Willy and tells him stories about the dragon father who protects his people. Willy says he will marry Thùy Linh and take her back to America. One night, Willy brings a tall, thin man with him. Bihn sees hatred in the man’s yellow snake eyes. The thin man reminds Bihn of his grandmother’s bamboo whip. His snake eyes loop around the room and settle on Bihn, nestled in his dark space. 

How much for the boy?  

Victoria MacKenzie, "For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain"

Victoria MacKenzie is a fiction writer and poet based in Scotland. Her debut novel, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain (Bloomsbury, 2023), explores the lives of the medieval mystics Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. She has won a number of writing prizes including a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and the Emerging Writer Award from Moniack Mhor, and has held writing residencies in Scotland, Finland and Australia. Her second novel, Brantwood, about the Victorian art critic John Ruskin, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2025. Her website is here. 

About For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain is a novel based on the lives of two real women, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Both women have visions of Christ, but to claim direct communication with God is heresy – and the punishment for heresy is to be burnt alive. Using intertwined first-person narratives, Julian and Margery tell the stories of their lives. Margery is a traumatised mother of fourteen, full of shame about sex and childbirth, and hounded by the church for talking about her visions. Julian is an anchoress – haunted by grief, she has lived for twenty-three years in a single room. She has told no one of her visions, but she has written them down in secret. Her book, now known as Revelations of Divine Love, is the first book in English by a woman.

The novel culminates in a meeting between the two women at the window of Julian’s anchoress cell, where they confide their deepest fears. Margery is inspired to return home and dictate the story of her own life: The Book of Margery Kempe is the first known autobiography in English. For Thy Great Pain is a novel about grief, motherhood and grace, and it’s also the story of the beginning of women’s writing.

You can read a review of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, by Victoria MacKenzie

JULIAN

Those early days, weeks, months, years of being in my cell – I am glad I will not live through them again. Though I knew that God would send me trials and tribulations, I did not predict the form that these would take. 

I had thought I was ready for the life of an anchoress. I had wanted to prolong each moment of my life, to get closer to experiencing time as God experiences it: not the instantly dissolving moment, but something larger and more encompassing. A stillness that doesn’t pass as soon as you think yourself into it.

I’d thought I would live as slowly as moss in my stone cell. I’d thought I would step out of my life as soon as I stepped into the cell. But I was still me. Nothing had changed. I was myself, with all my usual racing thoughts and yearnings and memories and foolishness.

Nothing can prepare you for spending the rest of your life in a single room. Never to be touched by another human being. Never to run. Never to feel the rain on your face. Never to walk in the garden and see flowers unfolding their colours and scents. 

I had died to the world, died to my old life, but I was not dead. 

Sara brought me food and firewood, but in those early days we did not know each other. She was careful to follow Master Thomas’ orders not to distract me with what he called ‘women’s chatter’. She treated me like a holy saint, whispering ‘Mother Julian, I have your supper.’ I could almost hear her curtseying on the other side of the curtain. 

How I yearned for women’s chatter.

Gaynor Jones, "Among These Animals"

Gaynor Jones is a writer based in Oldham. She is the recipient of a 2020 Northern Writer’s Award for her short story collection in progress, Girls Who Get Taken & Other Stories. She has won or been placed in writing competitions including the Bridport Prize for flash fiction, the Mairtín Crawford Short Story Award and the Bath Flash Fiction Award. She has performed her work at spoken word nights in the North West and at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe with For Book’s Sake. Her website is here. 

About Among These Animals 

Among These Animals is a novella-in-flash that traces the lives of farmer Derfel and his daughter Carys from the 1950s onwards in North Wales. An experimental take on a traditional historical saga, the hybrid form of the book reflects the themes within: this is a story about how family can break us, but can also put us back together again. 

You can see more details about Among These Animals on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample from it. 

From Among These Animals

Yolk 

The letters are carved like a secret. The base of the thick tree trunk at the entrance to the farm now bears her name forever. It will stretch and grow with the tree, the letters reaching skyward, growing as the boy who carved it grows, until the leaves reach the clouds and she is nothing but a memory. 

Owain had tried to climb the tree but Carys shooed him away. She can hear him bashing stones together at the top of the drive. She wants to be alone to feel the carving under her fingers, to imagine the hand behind it. 

Carys does not know which farmhand it was; it could be any of them. She has heard them whispering about her as she passes in the yard in her summer shorts. She could stop and join in with them, could watch their cheeks turn crimson as she leans over to roll a marble or toss a jack, but she is not interested in such games. Instead she roams the fields after school, shirking her work, beheading dandelions that have no right to be growing there anyway, looking for the young man with the dark eyes and the scarred arm. Lately he lingers when he drops off the keys after his work, taking warm cups of tea or slices of honeyed toast, whatever her mother offers. 

Carys is leaning down in the late autumn sun, tracing the letters of her own name, when she feels the body behind her. A hand moves onto hers, the sleeves rolled up above it just enough to show the criss-cross pattern of wire in flesh. The hand flattens out her own until it covers the carved letters, and a voice whispers her own name into her ear. She feels a peck-peck-pecking low down in her groin as though there is an egg in there, something trying to get out. When he turns her around and presses his mouth onto hers, the egg bursts open, and it isn’t a bird in there, but the white, and the yolk, viscous and warm, flooding her body. 

Her eyes are closed. She is gone. She doesn’t hear Owain drop his stones. She doesn’t see him run towards the fields. She doesn’t feel the rain, thick and heavy, falling onto her skin. 

Carys arrives home to her mother cracking eggs into a pan for the morning batter. The shells pile up, jagged edges slotting into each other imperfectly. The twins are in their pyjamas, tearing at pages in a comic book. Carys grabs a towel and rubs at her hair. Her father looks up at her and then up at the clock, and then back at her. Carys drops the towel and keeps her hands at her side, refusing to flatten down her skirt or check her arms for tiny scratches from the tree. 

‘Come on now, boys. Let’s get you to bed.’ 

She looks back over her shoulder at her father at the kitchen table, rolling an egg in his hand. He is moving it gently, as if he knows how easily it might be broken.