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| art work, "Lovers" by Ira Joel Haber |
Today Strange Facts About The Human Body You Know About (after Tales for Men Who are Lost at Sea) a flash fiction of mine was published at Oddball Magazine, but to be honest the piece, written in 2025, was over twenty years in the making. Let me explain.
Back before there was social media, when the internet had bulletin boards, which people joined they had common interests. People posted and others would comment. (often with insults or straight out sexual comments.)
But, I digress.
In May 2004, I joined a bulletin board Scrawl: The Writer's Asylum. I had two books under my belt, but they were bad raw. I never wrote flash fiction and Scrawl would do two flash fiction prompts a week. Everyone would write for a hour, then everyone would comment on all the other work. It was called Flash and Chat.
As wonderful as everyone in that group was, I would always read Nadine Darling's work when I was stuck in my own writing and needed magic to recharge. Nadine's unique and creative stories and the cadence within the work ALWAYS jump started my own flash fictions.
Which brings me to 21 years later. Poet/writer, Eric Silverman, from my new on-line group, The Write Launch group suggested we have a day and wrote from prompts. Good idea. I suggested that we write for an hour, post on a Google Doc, and everyone was required to comment on everyone else. During one of these sessions, the story, Strange Facts About The Human Body You Know About was birthed. It's a flash in list form, something Nadine was a genius at, and from those recollections mine was written. It is hardly in the same league as hers, but it was definitely influenced by her.
When my story was accepted a week ago, I wanted to honor this collection, and the writer of, so I added the title of Nadine's book as the sub title for mine. I also will suggest that you read her book. It are so much better.
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