RASSSA. Whassat?

You probably know by now that I'm a proud Cloudie. That is, a member of The Word Cloud, an online writing community run by the Writer's Workshop.

Within that community are various groups; I belong to one called the Random and Speculative Short Story Appreciation group - RASSSA for short. (he! pun intended.)

Well, this particular group, under the editorial eyes of JA Ironside and Matthew Willis, are producing an anthology of short stories. I'm thrilled to be able to say that two of mine have been accepted for publication in A Seeming Glass. The stories are based around a theme of reflection and every story is inspired by a much older original - but our versions are a little...twisted; fairytales don't always have a happy ending.

As part of the pre-launch publicity (look out for a book blast coming soon!), each of the authors have been asked to write a piece of flash fiction for the Random Writers website - but it has to be connected to our stories in the anthology. They'll be posted from mid-July onwards and be available to read absolutely FREE! (I'll let you know when the first of the prequels are up...keep an eye out!)

But I tell you what, writing something that's connected to the main story, yet doesn't give anything away and still leaves the reader wanting to know more is flippin' difficult! Mine both ended up as prequels. The first one lent itself very well to a short story format - it had a beginning, middle and end of its own and featured one of the characters from the main story. Lovely jubbly. The second...well, it ended up as something that would've served better as an introduction. It didn't have that same sense of completeness about it.

Either way, I hope you'll drop by the site and, if your appetite is whetted by our flash fiction pieces, perhaps you'll consider buying the book...