280 x70 by Gill James

 

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What does that first picture that you see each day on social media say? Sometimes it makes you laugh and sometime it fills you with dread, all of which you must express in exactly 280 words. That was the challenge. It’s up to the reader to decide if it’s been met.

These very short stories wander and wonder through multiple aspects of 21st century life, give a nod to the future and a glance back at the past. They pose questions and occasionally offer suggestions.

Gill James offers food for thought in 280 x 70.

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Auhtor avialble to give talks about writing this sort of book. use contact form to connect

Horse Dreams by Karen Arnold

 

Stories that shine like tiny jewels and provide a glimpse of the magic that can be found in the ordinary and the unseen , stories that act like a shard of stained glass, letting us see the world in unexpected ways.

Some of these stories are prize winners and have been printed in other places, but many are appearing in print here for the first time. At under 500 words, but containing whole lives or sinking deep into a single moment, they are all an invitation to look for the magic in the everyday – to notice that things are not always only what they seem to be. Karen’s work has been published widely in a number of literary magazines but this is her first collection. As the title story in Horse Dreams tells us, “there are no white horses, they are all grey”.

Out on 30 September 2025

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Shhh! by Matthew Roy Davey

 

Welcome to the flash fiction library where the shelves are groaning with bitesize fiction.

Libraries are quiet places, ordered places, places of intellect, culture and civilisation. But hiding inside are words that can explode like bombs, words to anger and appal, to titillate and tease, words to amuse and entertain. Which will you choose to read first?

Matthew Roy Davey offers us a wealth of bijou tales in his perfectly formed Shhh!

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A well crafted and conceptualised experience. Troubling and traumatic though it often is.

 

I was eagerly awaiting Davey’s next book, and this brilliant compilation of short stories did not disappoint. A wild array of beautifully realised tales, told in Davey’s own distinctive style. I cannot recommend this book enough!

Davey has transformed the tranquil setting of a library into a playground for explosive storytelling. Each tale, though small in word count, contains wit, surprise, and emotional punch.

From the Beginning to the End by Henry Lewi

 

Sure, there are beginnings and ends and there is all the stuff that happens in the middle.

Begin with the Big Bang and end with a distant trumpet call; understand how to send a cheese sandwich into the future, have the origin of the universe explained, and find out how to achieve immortality; and finally add in a splash of espionage. Enjoy the mix.

Henri Lewi packs a universe into a small space in his thought-provoking From the Beginning to the End.

 

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An excerpt form the book 

In the Beginning

 The Celestial Offices were in uproar; clerks, angels, and demons were running hither and thither, carrying sheaves of paper, instructions, and bulky files. The Celestial Board had decided on a Creation Program and the countdown to the Big Bang had started.

 The black matter engineers rigged up the lighting sources; unfortunately some were highly unstable and quite a few exploded, sending an awful lot of debris out into the void.

 “OK, OK,” said the senior celestial engineer, “let them cool for a while but at least we’ve now got light that we can work by.”

 The scattered debris started to shine out there in the void.  

“Well,” said the celestial engineers “they were part of our office lighting sources – let them be; I’m sure they won’t have an effect on our Creation Program – will they?”

  In the celestial offices the lights began to flicker off, then on, and off and on again, with a monotonous regularity.

 “Not doing any harm is it?” said the Senior Celestial Engineer.  “It’s quite pretty really, so if we can’t fix it let’s leave it – we can call it a ‘Day/Night Program’ – how about that?”

 The Celestial Board weren’t that happy, but agreed to monitor the situation.

  “Let’s address all that debris flying around in the void, so what are we going to do about all those rocks and fire globes banging into each other. Some of them are exploding, others are just hanging around,” said the Chairman of the Celestial Board.

“Leave them be,” said the Celestial and Black Matter Engineers.  “We’ll sort it, don’t worry.”

 “We’ll just throw some Dark Energy into the void; that’ll calm it down.”

 So here they were three days into the program and the Big Bang hadn’t even started.  They had flickering lights and debris, and now the Black Matter Engineers were pumping Dark Energy and a splash of Dark Matter into the void.

 The Celestial Board met for an emergency meeting, “not going too well is it,” said the Chairman, as the various board members nodded their agreement.

 “So when do we fire up the Big Bang?” asked the Chairman.

 “Not just yet,” said the Senior Celestial Engineer, “let things cool down and in a day or so we’ll send out a couple of observers to review the situation, report back and we’ll see if we can get back on track.”

 The committee met again the following day; well the lights had flickered on/off and on again, and the Celestial Observers now reported back.

 “It’s all chaos out there,” they reported.

  “All this dark energy and matter has allowed the debris to expand outwards into the void. Some of the matter is cooling down, and they’re forming into what looks like solar masses, and rocky planets that are now spinning on their own axes. You can all see this on the ‘Giant-Omniversal-Display’,” indicating the current view of the universe on the massive screen behind the Celestial Chairman.

“Right,” said the Chairman, “do we pull the plug on the Big Bang and start over?”

  “Not just yet,” said the Senior Celestial Engineer, “we could throw some normal matter into the mix and see what happens.”

  “Ok do that,” said the Chairman,  “but I’m setting up a Genesis subcommittee to monitor all this; you can report directly to them.”

  “Righto,” replied the engineer, “I’ll be sending out the observers again. They’ll report back to me and the Genesis committee.”

  They were now into day five of their somewhat skewed Creation Programme, the Celestial Observers now reported to the Genesis Committee that on some of the spinning rocks various forms of Organic life were beginning to appear. The Genesis Committee escalated this up to the Celestial Board who now declared a Celestial Emergency.

  The infinity-sized room was packed with Celestial Board Members, the Genesis Committee, Celestial Engineers and Observers plus the Host of Angels and the Legions of Demons.

“Right,” said the Chairman, “where are we with this?”

“It looks like we have a runaway Autonomous Creation Programme,” replied the Senior Celestial Engineer. “As you can see on the ‘Giant-Omniversal-Display’.”

“That’s disappointing, how do we stop it?” said the Chairman as he turned to face the Giant-Omniversal-Display.

 The G.O.D. suddenly displayed across its screen, “LET THERE BE LIGHT,” and counted down from ten, and at zero, there was silence and the Big Bang happened.

 Reviews

Enjoyed reading this book of short stories; all entertaining, some more quirky than others, many are thought provoking and interesting. "Immortality - is it really forever" and "A crossword Clue", like many of the others, are full of interesting details, facts and curios.. a lot of fun to read. Nicely differing lengths, themes, timespans, and genres this unique collection of stories makes for a fun and diverse read.