Find Eating My Words: 2014 National Flash-Fiction Day Anthology Penned By Calum Kerr Textbook

therd annual anthology from National FlashFiction Day, sees a wide range of writers telling us their carefully crafted stories about the wonders of the world and beyond.


Given the theme of 'The Senses' these writers have responded in unexpected ways to produce tales of love and betrayal, hope and despair, life and death.


Writers include scifi and crime bestseller Michael Marshall Smith, crime novelist Sarah Hillary, Costa ShortStory Prizewinner Angela Readman, NFFD Director Calum Kerr and a host of others including Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Nik Perring, Nigel McLoughlin, Cathy Bryant, Tim Stevenson, Tania Hershman and Jon Pinnock.


This is a wonderful collection of stories, showcasing the vital state of flashfiction today.
This flash fiction collection has my first ever published story in, so this collection will always have a special place with me.


Despite this meaning my review is slightly biased this is a brilliant set of flash fiction stories based around the theme of "the senses" including the idea of "a sense of" something.
It is wonderful to see how so many people have taken this theme and interpreted it in their own way to devise these unique, quirky and emotional flashes of fiction.
Also included are the stories from the MicroFiction competition, which contain stories ofwords in length.


There are too many stories for me to go into detail about why I loved them.
What is truly great about the flash fiction form is that none of the stories in this collection are longer thanwords, some are much shorter, yet each word launches off the page to create the same intensity you would find in longer pieces of fiction arguably more so.


Read this collection, Read the previous collections 'Scraps' and 'Jawbreakers', And when you have done that, head over to Flash Flood and National Flash Fiction Day.
Flash Fiction is an incredible form and you will not regret discovering it for yourself if you haven't already done so.
Flash Fiction is deeper than short attention span theatre for modern society, amp these selections prove that.

Pick up a copy amp see how densely woven each sentence, each phrase is, Two magical sentences may have takenminutes, They need to be just so,
Watch how each word is meticulously chosen for just the right effect,
Realize thatother words may have had to die for that word that word was so perfect.
so stupendously ravenously profoundly perfect,
That is Flash. REVIEW of EATING MY WORDS

the

NATIONAL FLASH FICTION DAY ANTHOLOGY

Edited by Callum Kerr
Angela Reedman
Amy McKelden


One of the beauties of an anthology of flash fiction is that it gives exposure to such a large number of different authors.
It was good to see this, rather than many entries by a few authors, Furthermore, the anthology included a section of microfiction entries, a form requiring even more skill if a readers involvement is to be engaged.


I reviewed last years anthology, Scraps, and approached the present one with happy anticipation.
I didnt have the advantage of seeing the foreword I only had the ebook, However, this years title is appealing and apt, It refers to the theme set the writers The Senses, There was a wide variety in how this was interpreted, and a degree of variety in the quality of writing.


The opening story was totally enchanting in its reversal of perceptions of the rat.
With a good arc and subtle references, Becky Tippers story set a promising tone for the book.


At the end of the book the winners of the microfiction competition displayed the economy of words against the ingenuity of concept.


In the remainder, the stories I mention pleased me particularly, Different readers will have different preferences, but those stories that feel complete in the read surely master the genre.
It doesnt have to be a surprise ending, but it does need to make sense of the beginning and/or display a clear concept.


The imagery in Tasty a story about pornography works well, and the conclusion is both believable and restorative.
The concept of unfinished stories in Dress Sense ensured that the issue of loss and stasis would resonate after the read.
This was a sensitive piece as was the much longer story by Sarah Hilary, She paired two unlikely characters and set them forth for an imagined future,

There were several sad reads, and a wry one, Show Dont Tell, which made me smile.
Nik Perrings story was even more wry, A girl with an addiction to giving up and her boyfriends understandable responses suggested two interesting characters who would hold their own in a longer story, but nevertheless the piece had a satisfying conclusion.
A wider smile still for What We Do In Our Sleep, It really pays to consider the ridiculous sometimes, for it can illustrate a point in this case, hypochondria more clearly than a set of descriptions.
Tino Prinzi uses dialogue well and wittily here,

I did balk at some hefty wordiness “feculent metastatic lesions” in Seven Breaths, but the psychology of the piece was well understood.
Another insightful piece, more about coming to fruition than coming of age, was Launch Pad, It launches the reader into a vivid classroom scene and slyly comments on adult expectations, Handle with Care was itself beautifully handled, displaying sensitivity and poignancy in a piece that explores a childs revulsion against cruelty.


Michael Marshall Smith totally encapsulated the theme of The Senses in his story, HalfLife, with a very clever plotline.
I admired this, and the wellwritten Chekhovs Gun, for imaginative use of the theme,

It is hard to pick out some stories for mention when there are many that make the purchase of this anthology worthwhile.
Death, love, lust, thwarted ambition all are aspects of the human condition that these writers consider.
All the more surprising, then, to read about swallowed kittens, chemically induced sensation removal and the beauty of being an oyster.


Long live the flash fiction genre, sitelink post a

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