Tag: <span>Flash fiction</span>

Bonus Flash Fiction: A Violin Etude for Girls With Careful Braids

A Violin Etude for Girls with Careful Braids

by Julie C. Day

A toothed headband held down the wisps of Bethany Carrel’s tightly braided hair. Disorder, Bethany knew, wasn’t for violin girls, especially ones who accompanied their mother to Sherri’s Beauty Salon.

“Lovely.” Bethany’s mother raised a hand to the nape of her neck and tested the tightness of her chignon.  Sherri and Mrs. Carrel had a longstanding arrangement. Every four weeks Mrs. Carrel talked about “Rodger’s latest troubles” and how “it never gets any easier” while Sherri snipped, and sprayed and adjusted the angle of the chair.

A trio … Read more

Reflection on My Wild 2018

I often default to disappointment in what I’ve accomplished and so laying out the year’s good news is, much like writing a resume, a way to see myself from a less critical perspective. I failed at so much. And failed to sustain the energy to complete work far more than in prior years. Below is the much cheerier perspective, just as valid as the negative, but better, or perhaps less self aggrandizing, when seen as part of a balancing act!

2018 started with the publication of my short, horror story “Re-stitched” in Split Lip Magazine and its subsequent selection as … Read more

“City Magic” — The Cincinnati Review (December 5th, 2018)

I write far more short fiction than I publish. And what I publish often takes a few years of fermentation before it reaches final form. Writing, for me, starts not with a character or a plot but with something far more elemental–a feeling juxapositioned against an image or moment.  Unfortunately, it takes awhile to discover the landscape of these places that my imagination throws out.

“City Magic” is my shortest published piece. It started in the regular fashion, as a moment in the woods and two characters I didn’t yet know, but as I kept trying to form that moment … Read more