Tag Archives: Ad Hoc Fiction

Hermit-Crab Hangouts

picture of a red crab in the yellow shell of another creature

picture by David Clode, Unsplash

A Hermit crab, lives in the empty shells of other sea creatures. A hermit crab flash fiction story finds a home in the form of some other kind of prose. Recipes are used quite commonly to create fictions. For example, stories about relationships, romance, break ups. Just think of those recipe verbs, fold, mix, sprinkle, whisk, bake, simmer, stew, beat…

We’re running The Great Festival Cup Cake Contest through May, June, July and August for a Hermit-crab style 150 word max micro in the form of a cup-cake recipe. £5.00 an entry with half the proceeds (minus paypal charges) going to the winner and half to the Huntington’s Disease Association charity. Book bundle donated by Ad Hoc Fiction for the runner up. Closing date 31st August. Diane Simmons, one of our festival directors, who was also a judge for the flash-off challenges on the first festival day in March, is judging this competition.

Woman with chin length greay hair smiling. Sparkly necklace.

Jude Higgins

Our other Flash Festival Director, Jude Higgins is now running a FREE hour-long hermit-crab hangout every Thursday 5.00 pm – 6.00 pm BST, Beginning Thursday 6th May for those who want to try out their hermit-crab recipe flash fictions. We’ll cover ideas for light and fluffy, dense, funny, sweet, salty, surreal, speculative, dark and historical cup cake micros using a variety of cup-cake recipes. We’ll also try out other styles of hermit-crab shells, which could be combined with a recipe. For eg. a multiple-choice recipe story or other types of instructions and lists. Bring your ideas and your recipes. Contact Jude {at} flashfictionfestival {dot} com for a recurring zoom link. Hope to see you there for some flashy fun!

Our First Flash-Off Winners!

Photo by tuva-mathilde-loland, Unsplash

Diane Simmons and Robert Barrett were our Great Festival Flash-Off judges on the first festival day, March 27th. They set three writing challenges: The Signature Challenge which Diane judged, The Technical Challenge which Robert judged and The Showstopper which they judged jointly. Writers had one week to complete their stories and we had a substantial amount of entries for each category. Thanks so much to everyone who gave it a go. And thank you very much to our judges for their great prompts and for taking on their own challenge of cloning Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith from The Great British Bake Off (which inspired the three writing tasks). Many congratulations to the winners! Virtual celebratory cake and fireworks for all!
Read in Full

Flash Fiction Festival Micro Contest, winner and runners up!

photograph by Royston Hunt www.earthnotes.co.uk

Thank you to everyone from around the world who entered our Festival Micro competition. The challenge was to write a 150 word micro fiction prompted by the photograph above, ‘Prickly Chairs’ taken by photographer Royston Hunt.

We received 111 entries. Our judges, Festival Directors Diane Simmons and Jude Higgins, found out a lot of new information about cacti and there were so many inventive stories. We really enjoyed reading them this week, eventually whittling down our choices to the following brilliant micros:

Winner:

‘Eye, Aye, I’, by Kathryn Clark.
Kathryn wins ‘The Arizona Collection’ a set of 12 notelets of gardens in Arizona, including two cards of the prompt photograph, generously donated by Royston Hunt and her micro is now published on his website alongside the photograph. She also wins a copy of one of the three Flash Fiction Festival Anthologies.

Runners up, in alphabetical order:

‘Green Gardens’, by Amy Barnes.

‘A Brief History of My Family’s Recent Encounters with Cacti/Cactuses’, by Francis McCrickard.

‘Survival Skills’, by Lucy Zhang.

All runners up win a copy of one of the three Flash Fiction Festival Anthologies.

Congratulations to all! And thank you to everyone who entered.

Festival Micro Contest Open Now!

At each of the Flash Fiction Festivals (2017, 2018 and 2019) we’ve run a festival-long micro contest. This year, because the Festival was cancelled, it’s online and free for all flash enthusiasts whether you have been to the festival or not. Open for entries now and closing on Thursday 18th June at midnight BST. .

Your challenge Write a micro 150 words maximum prompted by the images in the photograph of the cacti garden in Arizona below.

The Rules: A previously unpublished piece pasted into the body of an email (no attachments) sent to
jude at flashfictionfestival dot com Up to 150 words. Subject line ‘Festival Micro’. No communication with the judge about the story. No author names on the stories, no stories accepted after the deadline of midnight BST, 18th June.

Your judge: Jude Higgins, Festival Director, pictured above holding the three festival anthologies.

The Prizes:
The first prize winner will receive ‘The Arizona Garden Collection’ a box of 12 beautiful notelets (including a card of the image reproduced here) generously donated by photographer Royston Hunt and the winning micro published on his blog to accompany the picture.(Check out his website to see this collection and all the cards he has for sale). In addition s the winner will receive one copy of any of the three flash fiction festival anthologies published by Ad Hoc Fiction

Two runners up will receive one copy of any of the three festival anthologies.

Results announced on Saturday morning, 20th June.
(Other festival events you might be interested in include Summer Solstice Stories, a workshop with Jude 20th June.
Flash Fiction Festival Friday, 19th June. Readings from festival presenters
Novella-in-Flash readings with authors from Ad Hoc Fiction, V, Press and Truth Serum Press, Sunday 21st June).

photograph by Royston Hunt www.earthnotes.co.uk

Novella-in-flash Readings! Sunday 21st June

We’d planned several sessions on the popular Novella-in-Flash form at the 2020 Flash Fiction Festival which we had to cancel earlier in this year. But now we’re very excited to offer a free evening of readings on Zoom on Sunday 21st June 7.00 pm – 9.30 pm BST hosted by Festival Director, Jude Higgins,to celebrate novella-in-flash authors published or soon to be published by Ad Hoc Fiction and V.Press in the UK and Truth Serum Press in Australia. The authors are pictured in the gallery below with their names and titles of their novellas. To get a Zoom invite email Jude at flashfictionfestival dot com
We think this might be the first reading event of its kind totally dedicated to the novella-in-flash! Each writer will read one short piece to give a flavour of their novellas and we will have break-out groups in between each group of four readers so guests can chat with flash fiction friends from around the world. We’d love to see you at the event.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Readers from novellas-in-flash published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2019 include:
Johanna Robinson, shortlisted in the Saboteur Awards 2020 and runner up in the 2019 Bath Flash NIF Award and Dan Crawley, Debra A Daniel and Francine Witte, highly commended in the 2019 Bath Flash NIF Award. All these novellas are available from the online Ad Hoc Fiction Bookshop.

We also have readings by Mary-Jane Holmes winner of the 2020 Bath Flash NIF Award and the two runners up, Erica Plouffe Lazure and Tracey Slaughter, plus highly commended authors, Alison Woodhouse, Louise Watts, Karen Jones and Nicholas Cook. Their novellas will be published by Ad Hoc Fiction later this year.
It’s a pleasure too that Michelle Elvy, is reading from her ‘small novel in small forms’ published by Ad Hoc Fiction in June 2019.

Representing novellas-in-flash from V.Press, we have readings from:
Diane Simmons shortlisted in the 2020 Saboteur Awards Novella category, Damhnait Monaghan who won the 2020 Saboteur Award Novella category and Michael Loveday who was shortlisted in the 2019 Saboteur Award for his novella in flash and who has also judged the Bath Flash NIF Awards in 2019 and 2020.

Representing novellas-in-flash from Truth Serum Press
We’re delighted to welcome Nod Ghosh.

Flash Fiction Festival Three Anthologies have landed!

Flash Fiction Festival Three, the anthology published by Ad Hoc Fiction and containing stories from 82 of the participants and presenters who came to the 2019 Festival in Bristol has been arriving all over the world. Thanks to all writers who have posted pictures of their copies in different locations on Twitter and Facebook. We think we have collected up most of them so far. But if we have missed you, or you want to add yours, please let us know. Booking for this year’s festival is open and about half the places are now sold. The programme includes workshops from well known flash fiction teachers and writers from the UK, Ireland, the USA, Italy, Germany and Cyprus. The programme and the workshop details will be finalised soon. We hope you can come. All participants coming in 2020 have the opportunity to be published in our fourth festival anthology.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Flash Fiction Festival Three Published Now!

Thank you to Ad Hoc Fiction for donating the costs of compiling, designing and printing our third festival anthology, which is available to buy now from the Ad Hoc Fiction online bookshop.

Did you know we are using the colours of the rainbow for our festival anthologies? Red, orange and now yellow. You’ll be able to build up a row of the whole rainbow spectrum on your bookshelves. And after the violet edition has been published, well we don’t know yet. A lot can happen in four years and who knows what the festival will have evolved into by then.

This year, as usual, we gave Flash Fiction Festival participants and presenters the opportunity to submit up to three micro fictions for the third festival anthology and our editing team, Jude Higgins, Santino Prinzi and Diane Simmons had the exciting task of selecting the stories. The 2019 Festival Anthology contains 82 brilliantly varied micros of 250 words or under on all subjects and themes by authors from all parts of the UK, Ireland, the USA, New Zealand, Austria Cyprus and Switzerland and many were sparked off by festival workshops. All contributors will get their free copy shortly. Read in Full

New Raffle Prizes for the Flash Fiction Festival

We’ve already been given some great raffle prizes, which are listed on our sponsors’ page, which you link to from the banners on our home page, and we now have some more prizes described below. We’re donating to Air Ambulances South West this year, a charity supported by Hall and Woodhouse, who haves sponsored a full price place at this year’s festival and have donated a £40 voucher for an evening meal in one of their restaurants

It’s Ad Hoc Fiction’s fourth birthday this week and as well as donating their services to compile the Festival Anthology Three after this year’s festival they are also donating a birthday bottle of ‘Ad Hoc Pinot Noir’ for the raffle. We think writers who have not had their 150 word micros accepted for the ebook some weeks, may find the label of this bottle fitting.

Thank you also to Nancy Stohlman, Damhnait Monaghan, Santino Prinzi, Jude Higgins, Tara Laskowski, Nod Ghosh and Michelle Elvy who are donating books.

And a further thank you to Nod Ghosh who is also donating some of the lovely glass pendants she makes. Some examples of them are pictured here.

Flash Fiction Festival 2018, Photo Gallery

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Flash Fiction Festival 2018

We were thrilled with the success of the Flash Fiction Festival, this year entirely funded by Bath Flash Fiction Award, and directed by Jude Higgins with the help of a great festival team.The festival took place at Trinity College, Bristol 20th-22nd July. Everything was brilliant, including the weather. The full programme of events began with readings on Friday evening and continued with workshop, talks, book launches and general fun with very popular impromptu festival karaoke organised by Helen Rye and Christopher Allen.

Read in Full