Countdown: One Week to 365 Days of Flash Fiction

Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, speculative fiction and a touch of horror, this collection plays with just about every genre it can lay its hands on. C.M. Simpson explores new worlds, new settings and lets loose some ideas that just needed to be gotten out of her head.

If short stories are your thing—and the shorter the better—you can find tiny tales from a wide variety of genres in 365 Days of Flash Fiction, which releases in one week and four days’ time.

Here’s another taste of the kinds of tales you’ll find:

A Victim of the Storm

Written on December 14, 2013, and inspired by watching the arrival of a winter storm on the Russian news, and the building storm around my own home.

There is something special about winter’s first storm—the way it announces itself with a crash of thunder and suddenly dense black cloud. The swift gust of wind, hurling leaves, twigs, paper debris and the occasional branch. For me it’s the smell—the sudden icy hit of rain-soaked ozone, the scent of imminent lightning—as storm giant’s armpit as you’ll get. The birds secrete themselves in the deepest leaf tangles they can find. I should have joined them, but I was caught out in the open. Now, I ride a storm crow, and wield lightning at a storm giant’s command.

365 Days of Flash Fiction is scheduled for release on October 4, 2014.