Wrestling with what makes good flash fiction, breaking down a story to its graphemic components, fighting imposter syndrome-all of it challenging but worth it. Ice Dragon shout-outs: Every time I’ve had the opportunity to judge-at Flash! Friday before and now with Fire& Ice-I’m reminded again what a difficult, rewarding, and humbling (!) task it is. This represents our effort to maximize every story’s chances, whether it’s the first or hundredth story you’ve written. As soon as each contest round closes, your stories are first stripped of all personal info before being sent on for judging.

For the finale, your judges were the Fire& Ice hosts, Rebekah Postupak and Deb Foy. Quick note on judging: Six pairs of judges across multiple nationalities and genres took turns reading your submissions (meet the judges here). No story shared here will ever lose its place. However, we will leave in place a static page with directions for how to find past posts and stories. Last item of business: on Wednesday December 23 we will send this site & the Twitter account back to their slumber-phase. You are what made this venture the uplifting little corner of the Interwebs that it’s been. And to all those who helped in myriad other ways, promoting, sharing, encouraging us, anonymizing the tales for our judges, and investing in the community by commenting so faithfully on stories: we appreciate you so much! And as always, undying gratitude goes to the unbelievably talented Susan Utley of Haunted Waters Press (whose latest issue of From the Depthsjust dropped, we’re excited to note!) for guiding us with your magic way back at Flash!Friday dawn.įinally, thanks to you, the writers who in the midst of a crushing global pandemic, showed up week in, and/or week out, sharing your stories and reading others’.

Thanks too to Carlos Orozco for banner design and Justin Hess for Fire-and-Icing our Flash!Friday dragons. And as for you, dragon captains! dear friends: please keep on writing.

Thanks to:Ĭraig Anderson, Nancy Chenier, Stephanie Ellis, Mark King (whose heroic determination to write through old Flash!Friday prompts sealed our decision to relaunch), Eric Martell, Sinéad O’Hart, Voima Oy, Karl Russell, David Shakes, Tamara Shoemaker, Betsy Streeter, and AJ Walker. But you did, and oh, our hearts, seeing your names and hearing your voices again! Deepest thanks to our twelve judges, who went above and beyond our presumptuous, out-of-the-blue request to serve again. It seems crazy that a long-defunct flash contest should crank up again, let alone that so many of the original community should return to take part. The Fire & Ice dragons say: –> THANK YOU.<– That’s really all we have to say, so if you’re pressed for time, please tuck those two words in your hearts and go on about your day knowing your words and presence meant something here.

Flashdogs by Mark A. King