Shining Moon Episode 25: When the Fic is Quick I

Hello, and welcome to Shining Moon Episode 25, Flash Fiction: When the Fic is Quick. I’m your host, Deborah L. Davitt. With me today are Kat Day and Michael Haynes as we’ll discuss the art of writing flash fiction—stories that are under 1,000 words in length. Let’s get started with some introductions.

 Kat Day is an editor and writer who lives in Oxfordshire. By day, she works as a medical editor, looks after her two children and wrangles the PseudoPod Towers tentacles into producing horror stories every week. By night she... does all the things she hasn't managed to do during the day. Her work has been published at venues including Flash Fiction Online, Cast of Wonders and Daily Science Fiction, and she writes regular flash for her blog, thefictionphial.wordpress.com.    

 Michael Haynes is an ardent short story reader and writer, who has had stories appear in periodicals such as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Nature. His debut short fiction collection, AT THE INTERSECTION OF LOVE AND DEATH, is available now. He serves on the board of Rainbow Dublin, an LGBTQIA+ advocacy group, and enjoys photography, cooking, and travel. His website is http://michaelhaynes.info/

Stories discussed in this episode:

Kat Day

“Never Enough Pockets,” PseudoPod 798: Flash on the Borderlands LX: Words Like Violence 

Michael Haynes

"1-800-Prophcy" Stupefying Stories, https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2023/09/1-800-prophcy-by-michael-haynes.html 

 “A Book in Winter,” Factor Four, https://factorfourmag.com/a-book-in-winter-by-michael-haynes/ 

 Other folks

“The Inheritance of Dust and Leather,” by Jenny Rae Rappaport., Lightspeed, September 2022.  https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-inheritance-of-dust-and-leather/

“Choose Your Own” by C.J. Lavigne, Daily Science Fiction,  https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/virtual-reality/c-j-lavigne/choose-your-own

“My Summer of George,” by Sam Rebelein, PseudoPod 888: Flash on the Borderlands LXVIII: Actualization

"Don't tell me that the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -- Anton Chekov

Piano music for closure

Thank you for listening to Shining Moon! You can reach the host, Deborah L. Davitt, at the following social media platforms:

www.facebook.com/deborah.davitt.3

Bluesky: @deborahldavitt.bsky.social

www.deborahldavitt.com

Transcript

Deborah L. Davitt (00:01)
Hello and welcome to Shining Moon, episode 25, flash fiction, When the Fic is Quick. I'm your host, Deborah L. Davitt. With me today are Kat Day and Michael Haynes, as we'll discuss the art of writing flash fiction, stories that are under 1,000 words in length. Let's get started with some introductions. Kat Day is an editor and writer who lives in Oxfordshire. By day, she works as a medical editor, looks after her two children, and wrangles the pseudopod towers, tentacles, into producing horror stories every week.

By night she does all the things she hasn't managed to do during the day. Her work has been published at venues, including Flash Fiction Online, Cast of Wonders, and Daily Science Fiction. And she writes regular flash for her blog, thefictionphial@wordpress.com. Hey Kat, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Kat Day (00:47)
Hi, yeah, I'm good. How are you?

Deborah L. Davitt (00:50)
Ah, hanging in there. I've been sick since the beginning, since I finished my last episode with, and it's been a whole horror story over the break, so. Michael Haynes is an ardent short story reader and writer who has had stories appear in periodicals such as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (I am so jealous of that one), Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Nature. His debut short fiction collection at the intersection of love and death is available now.

Kat Day (00:52)
Hahaha

Mmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:19)
He serves on the board of Rainbow Dublin LBGTQIA plus advocacy group and enjoys photography, cooking and travel. His website is michaelhaynes.info. Welcome Michael, how are you today?

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:33)
I'm doing wonderful. Glad to be back on the podcast. Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:37)
Well, it's lovely to have you back. So we're gonna dive right into our questions. And do you start off knowing you're going to write something that's flash? Do you intentionally commit flash? Or do you just start with a story idea and then it just happens to run as long as it runs? Or is it a question of on some occasions, yes, on some occasions, no. And...

How do you know when you've got, sort of a separate question, how do you know when you've got flash on your hands as opposed to a story that ought to be revised to be longer? And I'm gonna start with Kat on that since she's alphabetically first.

Kat Day (02:17)
I lean towards flash writing. I kind of write the minute there's Codex Weekend Warrior is going on and I see people kind of I say no and I see people say I can't you know I can't do this I've written up to thousand words I need to cut it down whereas I am that person who's like I don't think I can get this over 700 like I just

Deborah L. Davitt (02:27)
Hahaha!

Kat Day (02:42)
I just, yeah, I really struggle. I've got, it's funny because I've got a really good friend who is a novelist and we're hilarious together because I am like, Jess, I can't write anything that's longer than 1500 words. And she's like, I can't write anything that's shorter than 40,000 words. Like, can I get, can I go? So I do think some people just kind of lean one way.

Deborah L. Davitt (03:01)
Haha!

Kat Day (03:09)
rather than the other and that's probably just the way it is. Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (03:14)
It's, I will say that it's taken me some training to get myself down to being able to write because flash because I am naturally a longer more verbose writer. So Weekend Warrior, which is a Codex contest, which happens yearly. And for those of you who aren't aware of Codex. If you have a professional writing credit or have been to a Clarion or other workshop, you should totally check it out because it is a wonderful supportive community that does things like this and That's one of the reasons why I'm doing the flash fiction episodes early this year is because we are doing the codex contest on that and I figured people would like to talk about it and Maybe you like to hear about it. So

Um, yeah, but yeah, some people definitely need to train to trim down and some people need to train heavily to do distance running as it would be as it is. Michael, do you deliberately commit flash or do you just write and it happens to just turn out the way it turns out?

Kat Day (04:09)
Mmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (04:20)
Yeah, I think it tends to be more of the latter. But to use your metaphor, I do think I'm a sprinter by nature. So when we're talking about something like Weekend Warrior or if I'd be trying to write for, say, an anthology, which was targeting Flash, it's a length that I tend to feel pretty comfortable at. I grew up reading.

Deborah L. Davitt (04:38)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (04:49)
all these books, like, you know, 100 great science fiction, fantasy short stories, because that's what things were called before we had the term flash fiction. And I think, you know, sort of having imprinted on some of that, it's just a natural length for me to write at, though, you know, I think probably if you look at the average or median of my word count, it's probably more like the 2000. So if I actually want to write

Deborah L. Davitt (04:58)
Yes.

Hehe

Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (05:16)
I do sometimes have to be a little more deliberate about, you know, where exactly to start or what to talk about and, you know, what to leave in and what to leave out.

Deborah L. Davitt (05:28)
As soon as you said that you imprinted on it, I immediately flashed you as a very small yellow duckling. So thank you for the mental image.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (05:33)
Hahaha

Kat Day (05:34)
Ha ha

Deborah L. Davitt (05:37)
Where is the point where at which you start a story with Flash? How far from the ending can you reasonably start in Flash? I'm going to take that with start with Cat on that.

Kat Day (05:48)
I, you know what, this is a really interesting question because I am one of the assistant editors at Pseudopod and I do, I read a lot. There's not many stories that go out without me having stared at them. So I read, I read everything pretty much. And...

Deborah L. Davitt (05:55)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kat Day (06:12)
It's funny because Alex Hofflik, who is one of the co-editors, he talks about something called throat clearing, which we would also just call that kind of 300 words at the beginning of a story, where the author is trying to figure out where they're going with it. And honestly, the amount of times where we've said, this is great, but it needs to start about paragraph eight.

Deborah L. Davitt (06:18)
Yes.

Hehehe

Hehe

Kat Day (06:42)
You just chop this whole front piece off. And often writers will not want to do it because they love that bit. And I get it, right? I get it, because that's the bit that kind of inspired them to write the rest. But yeah, I think sometimes you have to be brutal because that bit is not helping you, not helping your story. So I think you need a folder somewhere that's kind of...

Deborah L. Davitt (06:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Kat Day (07:08)
Stuff I might use later and then you just have to be brutal. You just have to be brutal about it because you do not need to start, start the beginning and work your way through to the end. You need to start in the interesting part and work your way through to a point that is an interesting place to end.

Deborah L. Davitt (07:11)
Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

That's an interesting way of putting it. Because learning where to end and how to end strong is just as much of an art as anything else. But we will get to that at a moment because that's a subsequent question. Michael, where do you start a flash story? How far from the ending can you reasonably start in flash? I mean, I have a tendency to want to start at the beginning of time.

Kat Day (07:34)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (07:58)
and sort of work my way through to the end of time, because the whole story is so very interesting to me. But that's not what Flash is supposed to do, at least not ideally, although God knows I've tried to do it.

Kat Day (07:58)
Hehe

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (08:10)
Mm-hmm.

think, you know, every story is different, right? So I wouldn't say there's a hard and fast rule. But if someone said, well, what would what would what would your guideline be anyway, I'd probably say, start as close to the ending as you possibly can without it being incomprehensible. And for me, I tend to do a lot of like, starting

Deborah L. Davitt (08:38)
Yes.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (08:43)
very, very near the end. And then you sort of fill in some backstory as you're going through that last, you know, several minutes of action sometimes. Yeah, so that'd be that'd be my rule of thumb.

Deborah L. Davitt (08:48)
Yeah.

that in media res technique.

I like to think about it in terms of story beats. When I'm, I very rarely outline short stories but I feel that it helps to outline flash. And so I will sit down and I'll write down literally first 50 words is the introduction. Then I have 50 words to get you into this world. Then I have 200 words for rising action and whatever that rising action is going to be. Then I have 200 words for conflict, climax.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (09:01)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (09:28)
I have to squeak at an ending somewhere. So it might only be 50 words of ending, who knows? It depends on how much climax and how much conflict I managed to cram in there. But I do find that outlining works very well in Flash because it is such a tight form and you have so little leeway. All right, so the question, go for it.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (09:30)
Yeah

Kat Day (09:30)
Hahaha!

You see, I, sorry, I was just gonna say, I think this is interesting because I never outline Flash. I, what I do know is I always know the ending because I think you can't, well, I can't really write Flash without knowing what the ending of the story is. I have to be clear about that in my head before I start. But if I'm trying to, if I am trying to write something longer, if I'm forcing myself to, I have to plan that out because I ca-, I just cannot do it. So I guess.

Deborah L. Davitt (09:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (10:21)
This is it. It's just your, it's your kind of natural inclination. You probably lean more on that need to structure things when it's not your natural way. Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:31)
It really depends. Sometimes I've written Flash that has just grown organically out of just a single idea, a single image, and it's just plucked itself on the page, and it's been perfect the first time. And I'm like, holy cow, I was in the zone with this one, and people have actually agreed and bought it and loved it, and it's been wonderful. It doesn't always happen that way, though. So sometimes I do have to go back to just relying on structure to see what I'm going to do.

Kat Day (10:54)
Hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (11:02)
things like listicles. I find listicles to be very complicated as a structural form. I admire people who can do them and do them well, I just can't. So I would probably have to pre-write some of that sort of structure before I would go ahead and try to actually write-write it. So where's the point at which you end the story? You said something about ending in the most interesting place possible.

Now some people do the twist where they have to end on a twist ending. It has to be all M. Night Shyamalan about it. And I actually find a sort of an ennui. I get very bored with a number, having read a number of stories in a row that have that twist ending because sometimes I just want something to end quietly and gracefully. Sometimes I, it doesn't always need to have a big twist at the end, but that's me. And so do you do the twist? How do you end and Kat, take it away.

Kat Day (12:00)
I, it's not, I mean, I do like a twist, but it's not so much about the twist. It's, I personally like that sense of things clicking into place. It is that thing that got mentioned in passing at the beginning that didn't feel important that suddenly at the end you go

Deborah L. Davitt (12:14)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (12:27)
Oh, and I like that kind of looping background of that's what that was about. I see. So it's not so much the twist, more the loop.

Deborah L. Davitt (12:30)
Yes.

Yes, I do like stories that do that. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we were supposed to have Tara Campbell on this podcast. She was sick and we miss her, but she had a story that had a structural element that was repetition. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that is a fabulous thing to use in Flash as in poetry.

because it provides a backbone for the story and allows the reader, it allows the whole story to hang off of this repetition. And the reader is sort of comforted by the familiarity until you do change it or shift it or twist it near the end. But that, it's a wonderful way to structure Flash. Michael, how do you end a story?

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (13:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so speaking about endings, I liked what Kat said on the last question about that it's helpful to know the ending. And I suspect a lot of the times I've set out to write Flash and it ended up way too long for Flash. It's because I didn't know the ending in advance. And so I had to meander too much to get there. And then for me, at least, it can sometimes... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can be really hard then, though, to take this thing that's come out.

Deborah L. Davitt (13:37)
Mm-hmm.

That throat clearing she mentioned.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (13:50)
1500 words or whatever and try to stuff it into a thousand word or if you're talking about Codex weekend warrior 750 word Yeah, yeah, yeah

Deborah L. Davitt (13:58)
750 is such a hard, hard number to hit. It really is. You really have to, you have to corset the story.

Kat Day (14:03)
oh wait till you do... wait till you do escape artists that do 500

Deborah L. Davitt (14:08)
Oh, I have the five, the five, the five, the five hundreds of word stories are hard.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (14:09)
500 words or drabbles. Yeah, I'm impressed at people who can do drabbles, hundred-word stories.

Kat Day (14:13)
That's hard even for me.

Deborah L. Davitt (14:20)
I have done exactly one drabbel and that was actually co-written with somebody from Codex, that was Kurt Pankow. And I wrote the first 50 words, he wrote the second 50 words, and it was sold. And the only reason it was sold was because his ending was so perfect.

Kat Day (14:20)
Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (14:27)
Mm.

Yeah, and then as far as where you end the story, I don't think I tend to write a lot of stories with twists per se. I do think I've got a decent number, like what Kat was saying, where something that either didn't seem important or that you thought you viewed through one lens early in the story, you view through a different lens, or you have a deeper understanding of.

Deborah L. Davitt (14:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (15:05)
twisted so much as just that you have, like I said, a deeper understanding. I like the concept of repetition that you mentioned there, too. I do have, I'd say, some stories.

that end with kind of a sort of sharp bit at the end, especially in Flash. But then I think I get a lot of stories where editors are like, because I do tend to do those gentle endings that, you know, the character's perspective is what's changed throughout the story or something like that, and there isn't some big dramatic ending. It's just that there's been this

Deborah L. Davitt (15:25)
Yeah.

Yes.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (15:46)
very gentle shift in the character's world. But that's the thing that I find interesting all the same. So yeah, I think I've got a lot of stories even at the flashlight.

Deborah L. Davitt (15:50)
Mm-hmm.

That is where we go back to the very first episode of Shining Moon, we talk about literary versus genre, and literary tends to have more that character or perception shift as a sea change sort of thing. So it's not a bad thing at all.

All right, so we talked a little bit about the various lengths of flash and how if you found yourself sitting a pretty at 2000 words and you love all of them, and they're just so wonderful, but you have a 750 word limit because it's a codex weekend warriors or God forbid escape artists contest has come around again and you love all of them but.

Kat Day (16:37)
Hehe

Deborah L. Davitt (16:44)
I find that you have to cut whole scenes at that point because cutting mere words or mere sentences is not going to happen. So how do you go back and corset this in to the length that you are looking for? How do you remove whole scenes when you're nowhere near word count? And I'm gonna ask that of Kat.

Kat Day (17:02)
uh yeah you know what you're gonna hate me but i'm gonna say you don't right if you have 2 000 words and you love them then you make that i'm sorry i'm afraid the odd that is right one or two if it's codec if it's weekend warrior which is for people that don't know is for fun right there's no prize

Deborah L. Davitt (17:07)
Hahaha

Start over with a new story.

Hehehehehehe

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kat Day (17:29)
but the stories are scored but there are no prizes. All it is just, okay, I got the highest score but it doesn't mean anything. So if, yeah. Yes, yes, but that is exactly, and that's what I'm coming to because if you are writing for that, then I have seen people put stories into that are just half a story or a quarter of a story.

Deborah L. Davitt (17:38)
The real reward is the comments.

Kat Day (17:57)
And it literally just says to be continued, right? Because, and I am totally cool with that because what they have done there is realized they've got a story that's too long and they've just gone, you know what, just give me some feedback on this first part of it. And you know what, I think that's fine. I think that's fine. If that's where you've got it, because it's very short, we can worry you only have 48 hours to write, you may not have time to start all over again. You've got this thing.

Deborah L. Davitt (17:57)
haha

Ha ha!

Hehe

Kat Day (18:24)
chuck in the first 750 words and go just give me the feedback. That's why I'm here. Clearly! Yeah! That's what you want right? If you are trying to write something for a competition and it needs to be 500, 750 whatever it is for a competition so you have to get the words, I still kind of think if it is that much over long

Deborah L. Davitt (18:28)
Just give me that feedback, that all-important lovely feedback.

Kat Day (18:52)
because really Flash, I mean, if you've got two, Flash should not be really more than one or two scenes tops, I think. If at the moment, yeah, if you find yourself having written three, four scenes, you've just got a longer story. You just, yeah, put it aside, save it for later and start again, I think, yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (18:59)
Yeah, one or two scene beats.

Mm-hmm.

I tend to agree with that, but I would also say that if you still love it, I have stories which have gone through different iterations and different, uh, different versions of themselves. And sometimes it is, okay, I'm going to take the 2000 word version. I'm going to save it in one file and I'm going to see what I can do with a different starting place with this one and see if I can contain it to

whatever this anthology or whatever is asking for and send that off. And if it comes back as a rejection, fine. It wasn't the best version of itself. It can go back to being 2,000, 4,000, 6,000, 20,000 words long. Michael, how about you? How do you go about cutting the whole scenes if you're nowhere near word count or do you?

Kat Day (19:48)
Hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (20:09)
Yeah, yeah, my answer is going to be pretty similar. I think I would start with ask yourself why you want to cut it down, right? You know, assuming for the moment that it's not for something like Codex Weekend Warrior, you've got a story that's 2,000 words and you're trying to get it down to Flash, ask yourself why, right? If it's, for example, like for an anthology call, I would probably say look to see if you can start the story later.

Deborah L. Davitt (20:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (20:38)
but also really be willing to say, this isn't a flash-link story, at least not in this conception of it. And that may be the best thing to do, again, assuming it's not something where the anthology deadline is 48 hours from now or whatever, is to say, okay, I'm gonna let this be a 2000 word story or maybe after editing it's 18 or 2400 or whatever.

Kat Day (20:39)
Yep.

Yeah.

Hehehe

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (21:04)
I'm going to let this be that length because that's how it came out of my head. And let's see if we can work on something else for that anthology call. It's trickier.

Deborah L. Davitt (21:14)
It takes a little self awareness like costuming, you have to be very self aware when you're putting on a costume, whether this is going to work for you or not. But it also takes a little awareness of markets and just a little experience overall because when you first start off, every story is the one that's going to make it, obviously. This is the one, this is the one! And...

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (21:40)
Yeah.

Kat Day (21:40)
Hahaha!

Deborah L. Davitt (21:44)
Then once you've been in it for a few years, it's like, well, this one has a shot. I don't know. I'll, maybe it'll be the next one. The one I haven't written yet. Who knows? Throw spaghetti at the wall until something sticks. But when you first start off, it is very, I've had one story that went through so many iterations because I had.

Kat Day (21:49)
Yeah

Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (22:09)
it started off around 2000, 3000 words. I was very content with it at that length. And then I had a editor who wanted me to add stuff to it and then added and added and added and added. It wound up being 6,000 words. I was pretty happy with it at that length. And then that editor sent it up to the higher editor and that higher editor wanted to reduce it down to 2,000 words. I'm like, that's turning it into a kind of a...

Kat Day (22:28)
Hahaha!

Deborah L. Davitt (22:37)
blackout poem of itself at this point, so no, we're not going to do this. We're, and I'm going to find someplace else where it can go. And that's, I guess, the lesson out of that is that you can always find someplace else for something to go. Don't let an editor do that to you.

Kat Day (22:50)
Well, and also the editors don't agree, right? I think there is a bit of, if you don't work on that side of the desk, there's a bit of a tendency to think of editors as sort of a group over here that you have to sort of, and they all want the same thing and it isn't true. Like, no, not at all. Even in the same publication, I mean, you know, yeah. We, over at Sudapod, we argue bitterly.

Deborah L. Davitt (22:54)
Yeah.

Hahaha!

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (23:09)
Yeah, definitely.

Deborah L. Davitt (23:09)
No they don't!

Yeah!

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (23:19)
Yeah.

Kat Day (23:20)
Every now and then one of us will just go, I don't care, I'm buying this story. And the others will be like, fine. You know, and it happens. It happens. So yeah, I mean, you have to find the person that loves it. That's all you have to do. It's that easy.

Deborah L. Davitt (23:20)
Hahaha

hahahaha

Yeah, that's just that easy. Yeah, I mean, speaking with my own experience of having edited on a poetry journal, it could be as simple as time of day, whether or not I've eaten. I mean, what mood I'm in as I'm reading. So I tend to grab stories or at least poems in my case, and put them aside for a little while and come back to them to see if I still like them as much as I did before.

Kat Day (23:40)
Yes!

Hmm

Deborah L. Davitt (24:06)
And some of the ones that were like only a seven or an eight my first pass through, because I use a 10 point system. And I go back to them and I go, actually that one was better, that one had a lot more depth than I was giving it credit for. So I'm gonna move past that since we're getting a little off topic. And here's a more relevant question then, how do you cut words when you're close to word count, but not quite there?

You're within 50 words of hitting that 750 word count for codex, or you're within 50 words of hitting that 500 for pseudopod. How do you go about cutting words when you're down to the bone? And I'm going to ask Kat for that one first.

Kat Day (24:51)
Right, I have got some tricks for this actually. Firstly, the word just cannot go every time. I am the world's worst person for writing just 500 times in a week. You can pretty much delete it every single time. The word that can go more than you realize. Often, and these are words that we don't really read, I think.

Deborah L. Davitt (24:59)
So can the word actually.

Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (25:21)
Right. And so, you know, just cut them. If you've got speech, then people talking contractions, so contract, you know, so, you know, instead of, unless there is a very, very pressing reason to have somebody not contract their speech because they're trying to emphasize something or their robot, you know, you're doing it on purpose, then yeah, use your contractions.

Deborah L. Davitt (25:29)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Kat Day (25:49)
And then there is a cheat as well, which... See, now I am English, as people will be able to hear. So we tend not to use M dashes, the long dashes, right? If we need to separate two parts of a sentence, we'll separate it with an N dash with a space either side. Except I don't do that when I'm writing for Weekend Warrior. I use an M dash, because it joins...

Deborah L. Davitt (25:53)
Hehehe

Mm-hmm.

Hahaha!

Kat Day (26:15)
with no space because it joins the two words together and now suddenly that those two words are one word and on the other end of the clause it's also one word right as far as the so that's that saved me four words right uh yeah so i think that's i think that's all my dirty tricks

Deborah L. Davitt (26:21)
Hahaha

Oh my God. Michael, how about you? What are some of your tips and tricks on how to cut words when you're close but-

Kat Day (26:39)
Yeah

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (26:44)
Yeah, so I look for things like unnecessarily wordy actions, you know, she reached up and grabbed the book off the shelf. Well, okay, how about she grabbed the book off the shelf, unless for some reason reached up is important. Or for that matter, is the shelf important? Can you just say she grabbed the book? So I look for things like that. I don't tend to write terribly...

Deborah L. Davitt (27:00)
Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (27:02)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (27:05)
Yep.

Kat Day (27:05)
Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (27:13)
descriptive prose in terms of like what things look like or sound like or smell like. And a lot of times what is there is useful, but

that would be another thing I might look for is, you know, okay, I said he put on a green jacket. Well, okay, you know, I'm trying to cut a few more words. And is it really going to matter to people that the jacket is green? Maybe not. Okay. And maybe for weekend warrior, I take it out. But then hey, flash fiction online, they don't care if it's 758 words. That jackets green again, help make it more concrete for people. So those would both be things I'd look for.

Deborah L. Davitt (27:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Kat Day (27:49)
Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (27:54)
Um, if you have dialogue and the characters have distinct enough voices, you can sometimes leave off speech tags. Um, yeah, yeah. So those would be a few things that would come to mind, uh, for me.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:04)
Yes.

Kat Day (28:05)
speech tags.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:07)
Speech tags are a big thing that I cut out, yes.

Kat Day (28:10)
Yep.

Oh, and also adverbs, adverbs can almost, almost always. I mean, I know that as a writer thing anyway, but yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:15)
I'm... Yes.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (28:17)
Mm, yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:22)
I love that. I love a good adverb. I really do. So I like to keep them in when I can, because they are a part of speech that does help the verb along a little bit. If you've picked a particularly vivid verb, you might not need it, but sometimes they are there for a reason. So I try to keep them when I can. What I find myself doing on my second draft is I reorganize.

Kat Day (28:31)
EEEH

Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:47)
And this is a tip I picked up from a technical writer, actually, which is he told me, you need to work on organizing your writing a little bit better. I'm like, okay. And then he told me this, you know, 15 years ago, and it was a fair point. And when I reorganize, sometimes I find redundancies. I find sentences that are basically the same thing that are a paragraph apart, where I can just go ahead and eliminate that entire sentence and just.

the better version of that sentence in the first one's place. So when I go back through, I'm looking at structural things, I'm looking at organization of ideas, and sometimes it just winds up with better flow that way, and sometimes I can subtract 15, 20 words just by having reorganized my thoughts a little bit. So that's an important thing to think about. It's not something you think about when you're doing your first pass on your writing, when you're just getting the words down. Don't do this. I mean, I do it, but...

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (29:31)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Kat Day (29:33)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (29:43)
Don't you do it when you're doing the verbal vomiting part, portion of the agenda. But when you're going back through for your second pass, by all means reorganize, rethink, declutter your prose, sure.

Kat Day (29:45)
hahahaha ahem

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (29:59)
And I liked what you said about the stronger verbs, right? Ran quickly is two words, dashed or sprinted is one word.

Deborah L. Davitt (30:03)
Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (30:09)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (30:10)
Yep. It can get a little over overdone though, because sometimes people will go, that makes your prose all purple for me. And I go, but okay, everybody wants the vivid verbs. What do you want from me? So I want it to be perfect for me. I'm the editor.

Kat Day (30:23)
Ehh!

Yeah.

but that's you know hey different people do our different tastes yeah you can you can also sometimes you can eliminate the word and in a string of descriptives it depends like it gives a slightly choppy feel and sometimes that choppy feel can be good you know you sort of say you know the sky was green black red instead of the green black and red you know yeah

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (30:33)
Yeah. And I'd

Deborah L. Davitt (30:33)
Exactly, yeah, so...

Yes.

Mm-hmm. Sometimes in action scenes.

sometimes in action scenes, I use this even in novels, I deliberately shorten and tersen the descriptions of actions and I leave out the noun clause because it's all going in a row anyways, so it's short choppy verb sentences, but it adds to the feel of speed and action and rising to a climax type thing.

It's a trick that I get out of movies, basically, because those short little action shots where the camera moves rapidly is cinematography, but you can do that with your words, too, and it cuts down on your word count.

Kat Day (31:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (31:42)
All right, it's time to move on to your stories. And we're gonna start with Kat, with her story, Never Enough Pockets, published as part of Pseudopod 798, Flash on the Borderlands. I think that's 60, L10 is 60? Or is that, am I misremembering my? Okay, good. I got it, yay! Words like violence.

Kat Day (32:02)
Yeah, no, that's right.

Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (32:08)
This is a fabulous extension on a metaphor where the idea that we might be able to store emotional baggage into pockets made of flesh and what the consequences of being able to remove and use those emotions are to horrific effect might be. I don't want to spoil the story for people because I want them to go read this, but what gave you the idea of the story?

Kat Day (32:33)
Yeah, okay. So in March 22, a 33 year old woman called Sarah Everard was kidnapped in London. Brits will know this story, probably Americans maybe not. The reason this was so particularly horrific was that she was walking home in the daylight, minding her own business, not doing anything, when a police officer stopped her.

He identified himself as a police officer. He handcuffed her and he drove her 70 miles away and then he raped and murdered her, right? So this was utterly horrific and it just hit everyone so hard because it was like, you cannot, I mean, obviously there's a whole thing with the police but it just really hammered home that thing of like, you know, when

Deborah L. Davitt (33:11)
Oh my god.

Kat Day (33:28)
you...

a child you're kind of taught to go and find a policeman and it's kind of the you can't like you can't even trust you can't you know anyway so i mean i know there's obviously there's a whole load of stuff to unpack there it was very horrific and it shocked a lot of people and it just kind of made everyone rethink their universe a little bit i think

Deborah L. Davitt (33:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kat Day (33:55)
And then at the end of March that year, there was a vigil for her. And it was arranged, it was going to take place in Clapham in London. And at that time, lockdown was in place. So people weren't supposed to be gathering. But senior police had got wind of that this was happening. And they just made just one terrible decision after terrible decisions. They decided to be incredibly heavy handed.

Deborah L. Davitt (33:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kat Day (34:25)
with their with dealing with this vigil for a dead woman who had been killed by a police officer. I mean, you just that you'd really do have to think what was going through people's minds, you know. So then, so they the police descended on this vigil. And people were not supposed to be gathering. So that was the that was the argument for it. They shouldn't be gathering. It's COVID and they're gathering that

Deborah L. Davitt (34:37)
Yeah...

Kat Day (34:54)
many of the women that were there were pushed to the ground, they were handcuffed. If you look at others, you see multiple photographs of women being pushed to the ground by male police officers, forcibly having handcuffs put on them, you know, while it's clearly peaceful, right? And there was one particularly shocking image which sort of became the kind of the poster for the whole thing where a woman called Patsy Stevenson...

Deborah L. Davitt (35:11)
Yeah.

Kat Day (35:21)
She's quite a small woman, red hair, that's why it kind of stands out, she's got very bright red hair. And she's quite a small woman and she was just on the ground looking up at the camera, clearly not resisting, while two massive male police officers in high vis jackets and the whole works are slapping handcuffs on her. And it's like, well, clearly this is utterly ridiculous.

Deborah L. Davitt (35:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kat Day (35:48)
she's not fighting back. This is in, you know, and given what this video is about, particularly, it was just the worst thing that anyone could have done from a PR perspective. And it just made the whole, just basically reinforced in everyone's mind that the police were completely untrustworthy and you know.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:02)
Yeah.

Kat Day (36:14)
So anyway, I had watched all of this and I was just so angry about it and I started writing this story and that was pretty much it. It came from there and just the idea of what if one of the people they tried to restrain hadn't gone peacefully? What if she had some way to fight back and some kind of magical way to fight back? And the emotions, the kind of the idea of

Deborah L. Davitt (36:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (36:43)
pushing

you know, burying emotions under your skin. I didn't really realize what I was doing at the time. At the time I was thinking, I'll just, I'm just writing some body horror. But I mean, in hindsight, I, I was trying to deal with a lot of stuff myself. In lockdown, obviously we were all trying to just kind of survive it. And I think I was, I was pushing things down.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:54)
Hahaha

Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (37:11)
and trying to keep these things out of sight in order to just get through the day during lockdown with two children at home. And so I think, you know, I think that's where that was that was coming from. So yeah, that's where I don't want to kind of sort of talk about. I mean, I've probably that's probably spoiled it a bit, hasn't it? But not hopefully not too badly. But

Deborah L. Davitt (37:22)
I understand very much.

It hasn't. I did want to talk about the structure because the structure is phenomenal. You start off with a dead body and then you end on the reason why the body is there. And in between are the emotions and the pockets. And that's all I'm going to say about that. I do really want people to read this one. It's really good. And

How did you decide on that structure, on that perfect full circle? How did you come to that?

Kat Day (38:17)
I think it's not something that I sat down and consciously wrote in that structure. But I was, I mean, I like working in circles like that. Instinctively, that's kind of where I'll go. So that's just sort of how it fell out of my head, except for

Deborah L. Davitt (38:30)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (38:43)
this conscious decision that I needed to get back to the beginning.

if you saw what I mean. So I was working my way back to where I started, but with that realisation of why. I mean, I think, you know, I think this happens more than people realise I think people don't, people don't realise because people don't go, don't ever really don't often think about what's going on in authors heads. But I think it probably does happen a lot that authors of all kinds of stories and novels and everything will come up with an idea.

Deborah L. Davitt (38:50)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (39:19)
and then they'll just bend it into the shape of something that they're desperately trying to deal with at that time, whether consciously or subconsciously, right? I mean, if you read, yeah. I mean, you read, obviously, I think probably all writers need to read Stephen King's On Writing, but he talks about misery in there. And he talks about what that book represented to him, but he didn't realize as he was writing it.

Deborah L. Davitt (39:23)
Hehe

There's a lot of, there's a lot that's subconscious. There's a lot that's subconscious.

Kat Day (39:47)
afterwards because all right, this is a story about all this stuff I was trying to deal with. You know, it's coming up with that idea and then kind of yelling about your issues for however many words and then bringing it back to your concept from the start. I mean, I think that probably happens a lot. Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (39:57)
Hahaha!

Hehehehe

Hmm. We're gonna move over to the two stories that Michael submitted for this episode, which we're gonna start with one that is in a very interesting format. This is a 1-800 prophecy by which appeared in stupefying stories in 2023.

It is the format, it takes the form of an infomercial script detailing how someone might use the 1-800 prophecy service to avoid dark fates, even if they're the deserved fates set up for a villain. And I'm using those terms very advisedly because it's pretty clear that the villains aren't all that villainous here.

How did you decide on the structure being the script for an infomercial? Because I've seen listicles, I've seen scripts, I've seen interviews, but I've never seen it set up as an infomercial script before. And it's very well done. It has basically like panning shots and things like that set up. So I totally bought it as an infomercial script. How did you decide on this?

Kat Day (41:01)
Hmm

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (41:13)
Yeah, so as I recall, I think the genesis of the story was, I mean, it was definitely written for Weekend Warrior that we've talked about a lot. And I want to say it was a title that was provided, right? There was a prompt where you pick a title and I'm pretty sure that that's where this came from. And my recollection, so I wrote this in early 2021. And my recollection is

Deborah L. Davitt (41:31)
Yeah, the rummage show.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (41:43)
that, you know, Weekend, Weekend Warrior, Wonder Woman, very different WW, Wonder Woman 84 had just come out and we'd watched that, you know, in the weeks leading up to it. And as I recall, and I haven't rewatched the movie since then, but as I recall, the Pedro Pascal character has an infomercial scene or two in that movie. And for whatever reason, when I saw that title,

Deborah L. Davitt (41:52)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (42:09)
I think almost instantly I had this image of that type of character, that type of voice, and that type of infomercial, and I was like, oh, that's what I think I want to do with this story. And I've definitely got a soft spot for it. It's debatable how much of a story it is. There isn't a whole lot of plot arc to it. Just like most infomercials don't have much of a plot arc.

Deborah L. Davitt (42:32)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (42:36)
But I was pleased with how it came out and yeah, I definitely agree. I haven't seen very many other stories, if any, that I can recall that used an infomercial script as a format.

Kat Day (42:46)
Hehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (42:51)
So you've detailed how you what gave you the idea and what how you decided to structure it We're gonna move to your other story, which is a book in winter

which appeared in factor four And I believe this appeared last year

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (43:02)
Mm-hmm.

Uh, yes. Uh, actually, with that, I think 2022 actually, sorry.

Deborah L. Davitt (43:08)
Okay.

Okay, this short sweet tale, the narrator is worried about everyday concerns like being late to work, losing a job, and money issues. When they encounter a library that contains a book of poetry that they check out, and when their mother suffers a life-threatening event, they read the poetry from it to her, comforting her over the three days it takes her to die. They're unable to return the book because the library itself has vanished. No one is able to figure out who wrote this book, and the title itself doesn't seem to exist in this world. But it remains in their possession as a source of comfort for years on end.

What gave you the idea for this story? I will say that the idea of a bookshop or a library from another dimension isn't new to me, but you made this story very much your own, and I really enjoyed it. So what gave you this idea?

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (43:56)
Mm-hmm. So once again, it was written for Weekend Warrior. And here, I believe the original prompt was about a customer service-oriented institution that had some special property, right? And so I sort of noodled on that for a while. And I liked the idea of a library. And then I liked the idea of a library that's magical property was that it didn't exist in our world.

Deborah L. Davitt (44:12)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (44:26)
Um, and this is one that I know I didn't have plotted out when I started writing it. I very much, um, you know, started writing and just sort of went where the story took me. Um, so I think it, yeah, I think it took a decent amount of editing to get it down to that length. Um, but I really, my, my favorite part of this story is the, the character. Um, I just, I really,

Deborah L. Davitt (44:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love it when that happens.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (44:54)
You know, I can, I don't visualize things terribly well. So if you're familiar with the term, I think it's a fantasia where like, I can't close my eyes and see an apple, but I can sort of close my eyes and think about what an apple is like. And for me, this character is one of the ones that I can think about what they're like more clearly than I think a lot of the characters I write about and that I can think about

Deborah L. Davitt (45:05)
Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (45:25)
um you know where they are and the scene like uh when they're when they're you know getting off a bus in the winter and trudging through sludge and snow on a sidewalk it's the sidewalks that i've trudged through in sludge and snow here in columbus ohio uh growing up so and the character uh you know i can i can see you know see again i can think about what this character what

Deborah L. Davitt (45:35)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (45:54)
Yeah, really, really have a good sense of her. And I liked being able to have this character who's really just, you know, trying to get by in their life as it is. And then they have this, you know, terrible event happening in their life, but they're able to have something to make it maybe a bit less terrible through the intervention of this.

Deborah L. Davitt (46:19)
Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (46:21)
uh, magic librarian, magic librarian.

Deborah L. Davitt (46:25)
And I don't want to intrude on anything personal, but was the loss of the mother related to anything in your life at that point in time? Or you don't have to answer, I think it makes you uncomfortable.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (46:36)
Yeah, yeah, that's okay. So I would have said no, if I hadn't taken a moment to think about it. But several years before that, my father had passed, my mother is still living. And, you know, he had cancer, it was relatively sudden, it was a pretty quick decline.

Deborah L. Davitt (46:52)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (47:05)
And one of the last real times that he was Lucid and we were together, I read him a story that I'd written and he talked about liking it and...

So, you know, I don't know that was necessarily, it certainly wasn't at the forefront of my mind when I was writing it, but I suspect that somewhere in the back of my brain, there was that idea of someone reading to a dying parent. And now that I think about it, it may very well not be a coincidence that I think that was three days before he passed, which is a relevant length of time in the story.

Deborah L. Davitt (47:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, sometimes some things subconsciously come through and it's a beautiful story and I hope that it comforted you as you wrote it because it's definitely a very comforting read for me.

Kat Day (47:54)
Yeah! It is a really...

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (47:54)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Kat Day (48:00)
Yeah.

It's a really beautiful story. It really stabbed me through the heart when I read it. It's very powerful. I recommend everyone go and check this one out. It is very... I mean, maybe grief especially is one of those emotions that we as humans are perhaps not terribly good at processing. Particularly when in our kind of modern lives where you are expected to just get on with your life.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (48:25)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (48:26)
Now we're off.

Yeah.

Kat Day (48:35)
And so we don't even really make a lot of time for it. And I think sometimes it does come out in stories. It does, that's where it comes out, because how else, where else can you put it, you know?

Deborah L. Davitt (48:40)
I will.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (48:46)
Yeah, and I think.

Deborah L. Davitt (48:46)
I have a writing friend who lost her husband recently, and I was talking with her about grief and how we have this compartmentalized view of it in this modern world where it's a process, it has stages, you'll go through them, it'll be done, it'll be over with. That's a lie, because it does not stop, you don't get over it. And sometimes you go back through the same phases over and over and over again, and you get stuck on spin cycle on them.

Kat Day (49:05)
Mmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (49:16)
And it's not a clear linear path. And a lot of this is bullshit. And she said that was absolutely right. And that's exactly what she was going through. So yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (49:25)
Yeah. And when I think about the times in my life when I've written the stories that, generally speaking, I think have turned out best or that have had the best reaction from other folks, an awful lot of those were written when I was at really rough times in my life. And I know for some authors that that's not the case, that if they're going through hard times that it's hard for them to write.

Kat Day (49:26)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (49:45)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (49:55)
But I guess for me, yeah, maybe it's an outlet, even subconsciously, because again, it's usually, it's rarely, I've only written one story that I can remember. Well, sorry, that's a lie, two stories. Two stories that I can remember that were reactions to things that were immediately happening in my life or in the world. That's why I caveated that, because one was something in my life and one was something in the world.

Deborah L. Davitt (50:01)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (50:22)
But I think a lot of times it's the churn of emotions that's going on that's somehow driving the writing and maybe just getting it out on virtual paper is somehow therapeutic.

Kat Day (50:36)
Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's... and as a reader, you can tell when that's happening, because the story feels true in an emotional sense, not in a literal sense. Obviously, magical libraries are not a thing, sadly. But you can feel the truth of that emotion. It's not...

Deborah L. Davitt (50:36)
Yeah.

Yes.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (50:56)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (50:56)
Sadly.

Kat Day (51:04)
been made up, it's not been constructed, you can feel it in the story and those are the stories that kind of really hit the hardest when you know they have you can feel them coming out of someone's head like that.

Deborah L. Davitt (51:21)
Well, this is the time on the show when we go praise other people's work. And we're going to go ahead and move to a story that was recommended, which is the inheritance of dust and leather by Jenny Rae Rappaport. We all know her. She is another member of Codex. So we will definitely let her know that she has been featured and praised. This appeared in Lightspeed September of 2022.

This is a classic retelling, well, and that's a classic retelling of the classic story of Beauty and the Beast. It has a definitely a more sinister bent. There is no happily ever after here. The original beauty is warned by the dead people in the castle that there's always going to be a little of the beast to her new husband. But she ignores them at first until the raging arguments begin and she escapes with her children until her son too becomes a beast. She takes her family back to the castle, defeats her husband, and now a new young woman has come there looking at the library with familiar longing.

and regards her son with all the potential of love, but the original beauty has a warning for her. This story relies on a familiar narrative as a quick way to center and orient the audience and prepare them for the view askew, the changes that the author is about to make. Do you find that to be an effective method or do you find that sometimes it becomes too much of a crutch for the author? And what do you think this story does effectively?

and I'll leave that open for both of you just to answer.

Kat Day (52:50)
Do you want to go first, Michael? Cause I've talked a lot.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (52:51)
can. Sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's okay. Yeah. So gosh, as far as what it does effectively, I loved the voice of this story. I just went out when I reread it.

leading up to us recording this, I just, there's so many turns of phrase or sentences in it, where just the way the emotion of it and the, you know, regret and sorrow and all the other emotions that are involved here come through in the story. And I think it does a really...

Deborah L. Davitt (53:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (53:26)
great job of that in such a small space. And speaking about a flash, I think we've talked about stories that loop back to the beginning. This isn't exactly that, but in a way it's that, right? So it's maybe more of a cycle than a loop or something like that. But I think that works really well in this story. And I do think, you know, that...

Deborah L. Davitt (53:35)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (53:51)
To me, at least that sort of loop or cycle can either become too much in a longer story or too hard to really envision, to hold it all in your head in a longer story. And then as far as the reliance on the familiar narrative, is it ever a crutch? I'm sure yes. That's the easy answer anytime someone asks it ever.

Deborah L. Davitt (54:01)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (54:22)
I hate to give such a generic answer, but I really think it depends. Like it depends on what you do with it. If you're able to find something new about the familiar narrative, I think that's almost essential. Do I think that you could write a satisfying story that took a familiar narrative? Well, I was going to say and didn't have something new plot-wise, but just had a different...

Deborah L. Davitt (54:26)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the thing I look for.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (54:49)
tone or voice but even that's something new right because tone and voice yeah and tone and

Deborah L. Davitt (54:53)
It has to have something new, at least for me. And this one definitely does do something new. It explores the cycle of violence in a very satisfying way without being overwrought or dramatic. It's almost detached in the way that Beauty is looking at this new person coming into the cycle and she's trying to warn her away, but she knows that it's just gonna continue.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (55:11)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (55:22)
She knows deep down in her heart that it's never going to end, which is the tragedy of it.

Kat Day (55:27)
Yeah, I mean.

one of the things I really liked about this was the layers of it because it's a little bit of a joke that I've kind of seen memed that idea that Beauty or you know the Princess marries the beast or stroke whatever because of his library right? You know that's a bit of a joke so it kind of starts on that sort of light-hearted thing of like I married him because he had a really

Deborah L. Davitt (55:35)
Yes.

Hehehehe

Kat Day (56:01)
kind of thing and I read all the books and that was great and it's and it but then it's then it gets really dark and you realize she is She is getting into not only this thing which can happen where You know people are attracted to people who are dangerous sometimes and it's very hard to break out of that because it

Deborah L. Davitt (56:04)
Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (56:28)
particularly if you've grown up in a home where that was common, it feels safe, in a weird, it feels familiar and safe in a weird kind of strange sort of way. And so it's very hard to break out of it, you know, something healthier actually doesn't feel as interesting. And so she's, she, she kind of recognizes she's in this situation. And because she has children, she feels she needs to protect her children.

Deborah L. Davitt (56:33)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kat Day (56:55)
but then she sees her son particularly falling into that same cycle and it's that kind of generational trauma. And she, you know, and it's kind of that, I mean, it's not, it's in light speed, it's not horror, but there is a horror vibe to this because it's very much, there's no break, there's no happy ending here. There's no breaking out of this, you know.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:05)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (57:25)
I read it as the main... I don't know, is it a spoiler? It's not a spoiler. It's kind of... shall I... okay, because I read it at the end that she was dead, right? She is dead at the end. She's a ghost. Well, okay. That was my take.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:31)
It's an older story. We can spoil it.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (57:39)
That's how I took it.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:40)
I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure. I think it's left deliberately ambiguous because she's talked about the dead people in the castle so she could be one of the dead people in the castle now or she might very well not be. I don't know that it's expressly stated.

Kat Day (57:53)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, I read it as she is now dead, she is a ghost and she is trying to warn the new beauty coming in, but in the same way she herself ignored all the ghosts in the castle, it's going to be the same thing, so we're just going back around in the same.

Deborah L. Davitt (58:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, the tragedy of it is what really, really got me on this story. And I think it was incredibly well done. And I really, really appreciate that having this one recommended because this one was fabulous. We're going to move on to the next story on our agenda, which is Choose Your Own by C.J. Levine, which appeared in Daily Science Fiction. This is a Choose Your Own adventure story, except for the fact that it's a terrible adventure and it's not much of an adventure

Kat Day (58:21)
Mmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (58:46)
at all.

Kat Day (58:46)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (58:46)
It's a metaphor for women dealing with bad men out in society who are pictured as dragons in this metaphor. And every path ends the same way on step 12 with instructions that you've made a bad choice. You're a fool. Go back to step one and make better choices, except for the fact that there are no choices that lead to anything that's good. It's a doozy of a story. What did we like about the story? What does it do so well in a small space? And is there anything you didn't like about this story?

Kat Day (59:06)
I... Yeah.

I remember when this came out, because the first thing I did was send it to another friend who has written, choose your own adventure stuff. I remember, it's just amazing. It's absolutely brilliant. It's one of those ideas where you sort of think, why didn't I think of that? And it's so well done. And the fact that it is short, the fact that it is short is what makes it.

Deborah L. Davitt (59:20)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha!

Yeah.

Kat Day (59:45)
because if it were any longer, you'd lose the thread of all the fruitless choices. You wouldn't be able to keep them in your head. They're only 12 steps and you see quite quickly that they all kind of converge on the same point. If it was any longer, if it was, you know, one paragraph longer, it would start to fall apart because you would you'd start to lose track. And the fact that she

Deborah L. Davitt (59:51)
Yes.

Yes.

Or you would be going, I get the point already. I get that it's just long enough. It's just long enough to make its point, does it brilliantly, but then it doesn't wear out its welcome.

Kat Day (01:00:15)
Yeah!

Yeah.

exactly and it is one of those pieces where you're like this is what flash should be right it should be slightly weird and different and it the fact that it is short should be the point rather than it's a longer story that i've made short like it it's the length it needs to be short to work uh it's just it's just brilliant it's so clever it's so clever and it makes such a really good point as well which is that kind of the problem is not the women

Deborah L. Davitt (01:00:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kat Day (01:00:51)
The problem is the dragons! Like... We need to deal with the dragons! Stop telling the women to dress differently or make different choices or go different places or do different things! Deal with the dragon! Yeah, exactly. It's... yeah. It's just... I've got... yeah, it's perfect. No notes!

Deborah L. Davitt (01:00:54)
Yeah

Yeah.

Michael, what did you like? What did you think it did effectively?

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:01:18)
Yeah, I mean, I think Kat hit, you know, hit on all the high notes there. Yeah, I love stories with interesting formats. And I do think that Flash tends to be an especially good place for those, right? Like, yes, yep, yep. Yeah, like this isn't a listicle story, but like imagining a listicle novelette, and I just know. But yeah, so this story.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:01:32)
Mm.

It's a laboratory for the weird, yes.

Kat Day (01:01:37)
Mm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:01:43)
No, no. I wouldn't make it past the first page.

Kat Day (01:01:46)
Oh!

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:01:48)
Yeah, yeah, I think this story, it knows exactly what length it needs to be. There's not a wasted word in it. Yeah, I feel like it really was an excellent use of the format. And when we were talking earlier on the podcast about stories that are written where you sort of can sense...

uh what emotions that you expect the writer may have been thinking about at that time. Yes, yeah I mean I haven't spoken with CJ about the story so I'm only presuming but uh but gosh I you know if I had written that story it would have been from a place of fury um and so I assume it probably was for the author as well.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:02:16)
Oh, the rage in this story.

Kat Day (01:02:19)
Mmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:02:32)
Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:02:37)
Yeah, I mean, one of the questions you asked was, is there anything that doesn't work well? If I had to say something, it's just that once you've read it, you know where it's going. And like, when I was trying to think of flash stories that I'd found affecting, this was one I thought of, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone. But, you know, rereading it, I did know where it was going. And so maybe it wasn't as affecting as the first time I'd read it.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:02:48)
Mm-mm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:03:05)
But I mean, that's such a quibble and it's okay.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:03:08)
Mike my trouble with the story was that I was able to tell very easily where it was going because I didn't find it really made me want to go back and read the other paths let's put it that way because as soon as I realize oh there are there all going to. The princess is going to die no matter what because the dragons are just too powerful as it made me go that that's that that's not a conclusion that I.

I generally vibe with because I like to think that there is always something we can do that there's that there's other but I understand the rage behind that story. I understand the emotional state of it. And I and I have to respect that because it's not me but it is somebody else and it is a valid emotion. So

We're gonna bop to our third story. We don't usually do three stories, but we're gonna lift up a third story, which is My Summer of George by Sam Rebeline, published as part of the, Rebeline, okay. As part of the Pseudopod, Rebeline, Rebeline? As, Rebeline, okay. As published as part of Pseudopod 888, Flash on the Borderlands. I'm not gonna even attempt that particular,

Kat Day (01:04:05)
Rebelime. I think.

No, I think it's Revoline.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:04:25)
Roman numeral, and it's the subtitled actualization. And this story flies and Seinfeld reruns form a light motif of suggestion. The horror dawns on the reader gradually as we come to realize that the narrator is very much dead or maybe dead alive as the case might be. As everyone in the narrator's view is, everyone is dead, everyone is dead with flies in them. Wow, this is a tour de force of

slow, the slow realization is built perfectly block by block by block on top of each other, until there's only one conclusion that you can come to. And that is where the narrator is in this state of existential horror. And what did you think it did effectively? What did you like or dislike about the piece? I'm going to start with Michael this time.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:05:20)
Yeah, so I had not read this one before, so it was new to me. So it definitely evoked an effective sense of dread. And I know for me, when I was thinking about it, with the author talking specifically about it being 2023, I don't know if this was what the author was specifically going for. But for me, it did.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:05:43)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:05:49)
put me in the mind of people who were feeling in a really sort of stuck place after everything that happened with COVID and, you know, maybe having difficulty finding a job, which is discussed a lot there. Those were those are the sorts of emotions and resonances that I found with it. Yeah, so I thought it was it was great.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:06:19)
developing that sense of dread and, yeah, and I guess, looking back at now, boy, that last line, and I won't say it here, you know, avoiding spoilers, but that last line, boy, you want dread, that last line is got dread all over the place.

Kat Day (01:06:29)
Oh yeah!

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:32)
Yeah.

Kat Day (01:06:35)
That is, I mean, it is, that is the best last line of a horror story that I can just, that I can think of. And I read a lot of horror stories. It's just, and it's, and it's so, it's, it's true. And it's kind of obvious. And it just sort of, it's just there and you just go, oh, you just smack me over the head with that.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:35)
Yeah.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:06:41)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:49)
I imagine you do.

Kat Day (01:07:04)
It's so, yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:07:04)
That's sometimes that's how you want to end the flash is with a hammer on the head. Sometimes I want somebody just to, sometimes out of a story, I would just want to be led gently by the hand. Other times a quick sharp shock is exactly what I'm looking for and it suits this story perfectly. Oh.

Kat Day (01:07:10)
Yeah!

Yeah, I mean, I, for me, the, I mean, I remember reading this and, and that slow realization. Because, because, because I, you know, again, I read a lot of horror, you know, I, I kind of often I know how things are going to go, right? You know,

Deborah L. Davitt (01:07:32)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Kat Day (01:07:44)
he-

he's a ghost, she's dead, that's a thing, there with her, there with her, he's a werewolf, she's a vampire, like you know how it is, right? But I did not, I did not see where this was going as I was reading it until I was meant to see it, until the author wanted me to see it, which is sort of halfway, two thirds of the way through. That's what, and so that is part of the joy for me when I...

Deborah L. Davitt (01:07:51)
Yes.

Kat Day (01:08:13)
when I, the jaded reader, still feels that kind of joy of, you know, oh, okay.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:08:21)
I had a guess at it about one third of the way in after the second or third repetition of the flies, just because I have a particular horror of flies. So.

Kat Day (01:08:26)
Mmm.

Yeah, but it's not easy to do Creeping Dread. It's really hard to do Creeping Dread in 800 or so words. So this is like a, it's a really spectacular thing that he has pulled off here, right? I mean, to go back to the running metaphor, it's like, okay, a lot of people can

Deborah L. Davitt (01:08:40)
It's not.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely, yes.

Kat Day (01:09:01)
run a

run a mile right but not many people can run a mile in four minutes and that's what we're talking about here that is what this is that he's pulled this off yeah i mean

Deborah L. Davitt (01:09:05)
Mm-hmm. Yes, this is the perfect four-minute mile. Absolutely, yes. It maintains a perfect pace for the reader. It never gets ahead of itself. It never gets behind itself. You're always in that moment of dread, and you're just this little bubble floating through the story, watching the flies gather. And it is really, really well done. I really appreciate you having suggested this one.

Kat Day (01:09:18)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:09:35)
All right, so going forward, do either of you have something coming out soon or out recently that you'd like other people to read? And I'm going to bop back over to Michael since he has had less opportunities to speak first.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:09:49)
Yeah, thanks. So I know we mentioned it during the intro. My debut short fiction collection came out almost 18 months ago now. It's called At the Intersection of Love and Death. It's got 26 stories in it, a number of which are flash, probably none of which are longer than say 5000 words. And that's probably pretty atypical.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:10:07)
Mmm.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:10:16)
And it's available on my website, which is michaelhanes.info. If you wanna have a signed copy, if you don't care about it being signed or you want an ebook, you should be able to find it anywhere that you would get books on the internet.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:10:32)
Interesting, thank you. Cat, anything coming out soon or out recently that you'd like other people to be reading?

Kat Day (01:10:44)
I am terrible at submitting my own work anywhere. So I'm really bad. There's always my blog, which I'm always grateful for people to go and read. I put short fiction there every month. Then generally, anything at Sudapod, because I am so incredibly proud of what we do there. I just think that we

Deborah L. Davitt (01:10:47)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (01:11:09)
I mean, we are fortunate that people send us amazing stories. And, but then, you know, we, we get, we get fantastic narrators and everything is not obviously for people that don't know pseudopod, it's, uh, we, we read horror fiction, it's narrated horror fiction. We, we have different narrators most weeks. So it's not the same voice every time we try and match the narrator to the story. Um, pretty much. We pretty much.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:11:32)
Mm-hmm.

I have to say that the story that I did with you guys, you had a fantastic narrator for it and you did some beautiful audio production stuff with it to make all the little voices come through. And that was really, really well done. And I wanted to just thank you guys again for that. So.

Kat Day (01:11:44)
Hey.

Yeah, I mean, I just, we, I just, yeah, I'm just super proud of what we do. Currently, we are running public domain stories, which is great because you will hear some stories from the 1920s that you may not have heard before. We have next week, next Friday, we will have The Ghost and Half Past Two. The Ghost is by Katherine Wells and Half Past Two is by Marjorie Bowen.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:12:11)
Mm-hmm.

Kat Day (01:12:26)
I'm really looking forward to that. I think that's going to be two very classic English ghost story type stories. So that's, yeah, that's going to, I like it when we do ones like that because that's, I always feel like that kind of sometimes that brings in some other people. We've got, February, I am particularly looking forward to February because I talked Alex into putting on the Edgar Allan Poe, the casque of Amontillado. I'm not going to do

Deborah L. Davitt (01:12:40)
Interesting.

Kat Day (01:12:55)
kill me for my terrible pronunciation. Anyway, I'm not narrating it, so that's okay. So we've got that coming up. We've got some other great stories and there's loads of great stories coming up in February actually. So yeah, come and subscribe. Come and subscribe to Pseudopod. We'll look after you. We promise you. It's true.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:12:59)
haha

All right. Next week on Shining Moon will be flash fiction when the thick is quick too featuring Rachel K. Jones, Amanda Helms, Vylar Kafton and Amy Picchi. And not to sound like everybody else on YouTube, but if you like this content, hit the like and subscribe buttons. It helps me placate the algorithm and we know that's all important. So with that, we are out.

Thank you so much for having been on, I really appreciate it guys.

Kat Day (01:13:48)
Thank you. It's been great. Thank you.

Michael Haynes (he/him/his) (01:13:49)
Thank you.