It’s Flash Fiction Friday in New Zealand this week (22 June), so the Tuesday poets are getting a bit flash. There are a number of events around the country, and in Auckland there will be a prize-giving event in the Auckland Central City Library (Lorne Street, in the Whare Wānanga, Level 2, at 5-7 pm) where the national flash fiction competition winners will be announced and you can enjoy readings by guests Siobhan Harvey, Murray Edmonds, Vivienne Plumb, David Lyndon Brown, Leanne Radojkovich, Katharine Derrick, Penny Somerville and others. Wellingtonians are meeting at the Library bar in Courtenay Place at 6pm – I’m planning to be there.
More details of events in other places on the National Flash Fiction Day site and an interesting article on how to write flash fiction (very short stories) from the Guardian.
Here’s a particularly short piece of flash fiction I wrote a while ago – the aim of this one was to write a story in exactly 100 words (excluding the title). You can read more at the Tuesday poem site from midnight tonight.
Neighbour
My neighbour spies on me. I’ve seen his Roman blinds twitching. He doesn’t realise I know.
I try to make his life more interesting, rising at strange hours to meditate on the roof. Some days I practise the flute in a ball gown.
I built a tree house in the back garden so he could watch me carrying things up the ladder: fifty metres of tinsel, a papier-mâché crab.
I like to think of him taking notes, trying puzzle it all out, wondering if he should tell someone.
I hope I make him happy. I think I’m all he has.
Janis Freegard's Weblog 
Like this one, Janis. It is funny and entertaining and also a touch of melancholy too. All that in 100 words — good stuff! Have a great time this Friday in Wellington — too bad we can all be in one place!
It sounds like a lot of fun. How fortunate he is to have you as a neighbour. 🙂
That’s a heavy burden, being all someone has (and having to be interesting, to boot).
But you carry it lightly here!
Personally, I like the crab. I thought piñata, but it may just be a crab. Lovely little story.
Ah, it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be a piñata. I had in mind a crab I made when I was ten (long gone now), during my first and only foray into papier-mâché. Thank you all for stopping by!
And congratulations on your success in the national flash fiction competition!