Monday, December 17, 2018

Just Released: "Pickle Blanket Chronicles: A Flash Mixtape"

Announcing the release of my chapbook, "Pickle Blanket Chronicles: A Flash Mixtape."


This is one reason my writing here has been a little slow. I was in a fun and informative, fast-paced chapbook creation online class with Ariel Gore. While I was interpreting plays and my regular video relay work, attending a work conference, and doing NaNoWriMo.


And I was making this book. It is a compilation of some flash fiction plus a couple of poems. There are some black and white photos, also taken by me.


A brief aside, since several people have already asked me. Flash fiction—what's that? If you do an online search or look in writing magazines, you will find different lengths and more subcategories, but "flash fiction" is basically a story that is under 1,000 words. Some people say under 1,500 words. Some others define it as under 750 words. There are stories which are even shorter than that, some of which have been variously given other names—such as ultra fiction (usually fewer than 500 words), or micro fiction (this could be 50 - 100 words), and there are even more names and word length specifications. There is the revolving popular six word stories and the six sentence stories.


Aside from the opening and closing poems, the stories in my chapbook are between 500 to 1500 words. Thus the "flash" in the title, plus the idea of a "mixtape," which was a compilation of songs in the days of cassette tapes. Mixtapes tended to be favorite songs, which were often shared with friends.


So this book is a mixtape of different styles and of my writing—fiction, dystopian fiction, creative nonfiction—wrapped up in an easily portable 64 pages, 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 inch chapbook. Like a sampler pack of chocolates.


The chapbook is available on my "BOOKS by Dot" page (link below the banner above). There is a PayPal BUY NOW link below the photo.


I present to you the front cover of my chapbook: