April 2021 Monthly Micro Longlist

Many thanks to everyone who entered a story this month for the excellent theme of RECOVERY from Jan Kaneen. We have read some wide-ranging responses to it and enjoyed them all.

We had 151 entries this month so the cash prize for first place is £226 and second place £151. The People’s Prize will be announced along with the results.

Congrats to the writers of our 38 longlisted stories. Please don’t reveal which is yours as all reading and voting is anonymous. Good luck for the next round – we’ll be back with the shortlist on Monday!

Longlisted Stories

  • Adding Worms Can Be Beneficial
  • After Grief
  • Alternative therapy
  • And if the best arrangements are made
  • Aunt Lilah is resting/restless
  • Bed of Roses
  • Breaking-up Bruises
  • Buried
  • Degrees of Corrosive Fanaticism
  • Help is on its Way
  • How to recover your dreams from the life everyone else seems to want
  • If Someone You Love Hasn’t Recovered, Can You?
  • In Twelve Years In and Out of Hospital, Mum Sat in the Waiting Room Playing Word Games to Occupy Her Mind
  • Inheritance
  • Interlude
  • It’s not the first time he has come home from Uni to go to Defence Haircuts with his mum, all in the name of recovery
  • Just Left With Crumbs
  • Last Year’s Break-Up
  • Martha Takes Her First Drive In Frank’s Car
  • Passports From Dr. Harry
  • Pieces of Our Boy
  • Returning
  • Rods, Cones, Driftwood And Shells
  • Searching for a blazer on the school’s donated clothing rail
  • She’d Dress Up Fancy Pretend It Was Our House
  • She Will Recover Her Wings
  • Silver flickers under the surface
  • Still Life with Minotaur
  • The Brink Of Belief
  • The Flying Tortoise
  • The monstera and I are hanging in there
  • The only way I can make sense of the word ‘recovery’ is to smash it into pieces
  • The Sea Change
  • The Taste of Iron
  • The virality of dad
  • Visiting Mum
  • What They Recovered, and What They Didn’t
  • When They Tried to Make Me Neurotypical

First novel news: London Black

We’re delighted that John Lutz, a talented student from our course The Novel Creator, has recently signed a book deal for his first novel London in Black, which is published under the pen name Jack Lutz. We caught up with him to find out about his debut, what he learned from the course and what he’s writing next…

Credit: Emily Nytko-Lutz

– Congratulations on your book deal, John! Can you tell us a bit about your novel; what’s it about?

London in Black is a near-future police procedural set in 2029, two years after terrorists release a novel nerve agent at Waterloo Station with cataclysmic consequences.  A prominent biochemist has pledged to develop an antidote, but he’s found murdered under mysterious circumstances.  

Our hero is DI Lucy Stone, a cop suffering crippling guilt from something she did two years ago — something she can only call The Thing That Happened. If Lucy can solve the murder and recover the antidote she believes the murdered biochemist created, perhaps she can finally forgive herself. But is the antidote real, or just a figment of Lucy’s desperation?

Who’s publishing it, and when?

London in Black will be published by Pushkin Vertigo in Spring 2022.

– You completed Amanda and Craig’s novel writing course The Novel Creator: A Mentored Course. What aspects of it were most helpful for you?

Everything about the course was useful — the tutorials, the exercises, the Q&As, all of it.  

But if forced to choose a single most helpful aspect, I’d pick the mentoring. Amanda and Craig are immensely knowledgeable about the craft of writing — but even better, they’re engaged.  They truly care about their students. And they challenged me, which I loved because it meant I was being taken seriously as a writer.

– The course aims to create writers and careers, not simply one-off books. What aspects of the course did you find were portable into your next project?

The course does such an excellent job of focussing on the underlying principles of storytelling — on how plot, theme and structure interrelate, on how characters can be used to embody theme.  All of that’s super-portable because it’s not genre or style-specific — if you’re writing a novel of any stripe, the same concepts apply. In particular, Craig gave a lecture on linking plot and theme that I’ve probably re-watched a half-dozen times by now.  

– What are you working on now?

Another thriller! But even if I were turning my hand to a completely different genre, I’d be able to use what I learned on Amanda and Craig’s course. It really was a fantastic experience.


Longlist: 2021 First Chapter Competition

A huge thank you to everyone who sent their novel opening for this contest. We have been transported to hundred of different places and connected with lots of unique narrators.

We are excited to reveal the longlist of 45 stories, from which we will now choose our longlist of 10. Well done to everyone who submitted and congratulations to the writers of the following novels. Don’t tell anyone the title of yours if it appears here as all reading is done anonymously!

Longlisted First Chapters

  • A Thousand Tiny Disappointments
  • An Unexpected Donation
  • Angels in the Architecture
  • Bargaining with Grace
  • Birdspotting in a Small Town
  • Bleeding Josephine
  • Bring Them To Light
  • Caged on Caiseas (from “A Terrible Racket”)
  • Countdown
  • Days Between The Hours
  • Diet Happy
  • Dirty Love Story
  • Down Came a Blackbird
  • Foxglove Summer
  • Game On
  • Grub
  • Howl
  • Leaving Home
  • Mary
  • Midnight Malachi
  • Northern Boy
  • Saudade
  • Sideslip
  • The Blue Bar
  • The Candidate’s Husband
  • The Choices We Make
  • The Devil and Miss Mills
  • The Girl Who Escaped From Zanzibar
  • The Grey Man
  • The Limehouse Blues
  • The Man Who Got Out Of Japan
  • The Martyrdom of Jonathan Keeler
  • The Mirador
  • The Russian and Mrs Greene
  • The Sinful Mile
  • The Slighting of Livia Rathbone
  • The Trickster
  • The West in Her Eyes
  • We Have Ourselves
  • Where the Blue Winds Blow
  • White Light Pictures
  • Who Moved the Sodding Hedgehog?
  • Wildwood
  • Woodlands Road
  • Write Me a Murder

We will announce the shortlist in April. Good luck!

March 2021 Micro Fiction Comp Winners

Well, that was a rollercoaster ride of WILD stories and constantly changing winners of the People’s Prize vote! There were 4 stories that moved constantly between the top spot, until yesterday when one started to edge out in front. Lots of last minute voters as well as last minute submitters!

Many congratulations to all of the writers of our 10 shortlisted stories as they are all fabulous tiny tales and all received plenty of votes.

Shortlist

  • After Imbolc by Robert Marmeaux
  • After the Funeral by Sally Doherty
  • Bring in the Clowns by Barbara Gannaway
  • Death at the Winter Solstice by Angela Pickering
  • How to Sow a Wildflower Meadow by Keely O’Shaughnessy
  • I Cast a Wish Upon the Tide by Karen Vallerius
  • I Remember When You Were a Kestrel, My Love by Morgan Quinn
  • Le Pain Maudit – Pont-Saint-Esprit 15 August 1951 by E.E. Rhodes
  • Rewilding by Alison Wassell
  • The Significance of Horses in the Dreams of Young Girls by Rosie Garland

1st Prize Winner: After the Funeral by Sally Doherty

We loved the whole tone of this one, the vivid imagery and that final line that reveals so much about the relationship between the narrator and her dead mother.

2nd Prize Winner: The Significance of Horses in the Dreams of Young Girls by Rosie Garland

Fantastic take on the theme and leaves so much unsaid but the power of implication is used so well.

People’s Prize Winner: Rewilding by Alison Wassell

Great story of a woman reclaiming her sense of self after a relationship ends that was also a contender for our top spot voting too.


Sally wins a cash prize of £249 and Rosie wins £166.

Alison win copies of two brilliant books about writing: Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction by Nancy Stohlman and Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg.

Well done to everyone! We’re looking forward to April’s competition already! Prompt goes live on 3rd April.

March 2021 Micro Fiction Shortlist

Well done to everyone who made our longlist and congratulations to the 10 writers whose WILD-inspired stories are now on our shortlist. Our judging team will decide on the winners of the cash prizes and the shortlisted stories are published below for the People’s Prize voting.

You have until 23.59 (UK time) on Monday 22nd March to cast your vote for your favourite. If your story is published below, no telling anyone which is yours as that’s against the rules! All voting and judging is done anonymously.


Shortlisted Stories

After Imbolc

The sound of you was quieter, but I still knew you were there from the rustling.

Scrap-paper catkins dripped from every branch that could be reached, handwritten breadcrumbs to their authors’ villages, sprays of wishes marking trails down to the cove. By summer they’d be all but gone; maybe a few tattered inkblots dangling, illegible. Remember stealing pigeon eggs in the Hollow? We found that nest lined with love spells, once.

Salt chill swept up the bay path to meet me there, rattling this spring’s freshly scrawled blossom, words already bleeding away. The sound of you, still all around me.


After the Funeral

I push open the door, circumvent a mound of unopened post. In the front room, dust now lines the sideboard, smothers the china figurines she’s arranged into perfect families. A hollow indents Mum’s armchair. I can see her sitting, straight-backed, pearls, cashmere cardigan. I should have visited.

The garden has succumbed to a tangle of weeds. Dandelions vie for space with their siblings. Ivy creeps into crevices, suffocating patches of forget-me-nots below. The roses flourish strong and tall. Mum’s pride and joy. I stroke a crimson petal, and a thorn pierces deep into my flesh. I remember why I never visited.


Bring in the Clowns

Visitors’ day. They stand in a queue. Women with clown faces, push-up bras and tight leather skirts. Feet squashed into spine curving stilettos. Just for their man. Their little daughters in pink frilly dresses, hair brushed and silky. Sons in their Dad’s image. Lookalikes in tracksuits and trainers. The rent sacrificed for must haves. The rent man seduced for a week’s grace.

Once bags, pockets and babies’ nappies have been searched the travesty begins. Men’s eyes lusting for what they couldn’t have. Taunted by each other. Trapped behind bars.

The ‘clowns’ smile for their captive audience. It drives them wild.


Death at the Winter Solstice

It was the shortest day of the year and a thump on the patio door. Only minutes before I thought it queer – no birds at the feeder andominously quiet. Then chased by a sparrowhawk, it smashed against the pane.

A jay lies dead, head oddly twisted, its soft pink breast still warm.I shovel up the corpse, slide it into a plastic bag to be dumped when the bin men come.

Yet I can’t make myself remove the imprint on the glass – this smudge of wild splayed wings, even though the windows have just been cleaned for Christmas.


How to Sow a Wildflower Meadow

While my neighbours are at work, I climb the fence and slash their artificial lawn into latticed piecrust. Their garden is grey and green. No incidental blooms of forget-me-nots or foxgloves. Just uniform grass bordered by foot-high evergreens and paving.

Puncturing the underlay and weed membrane, I picture the wildness that waits patiently in the earth. I scatter handfuls of seed before smoothing the puckered turf back into place leaving fractures just wide enough for stems of cowslip and yarrow to nuzzle skyward. Freshly exposed worms and insects buck and twist; with each new slit, the soil begins to breathe.


I Cast a Wish Upon the Tide

Each time my sleeping baby cries, my heartbeat stills. I check her driftwood crib. Find no oarweed braided through her finespun hair, no starfish oystered inside limpet fists, nor spindrift in our fond embrace.

No sign her fisher mother sailed homeward on this moonlit tide.

Our daughter weans on tiny shrimps and elvers. Licks salt flakes from a nacre spoon.

Swimming lost in nightmares, I awake to find kelp ribbons tied about my daughter’s wrists threaded onto seahorse charms.

Wild brackish flavours linger on my tongue and hands. And footprints trailed across the mudflats disappear like shadows on the waves.


I Remember When You Were a Kestrel, My Love

Even as a fledgling you were bold, soaring to impossible heights on tawny wings while your friends lingered, restless and envious, in the safety of the branches below.

I remember your excited chatter. A joyful, cacophonous exposition of where you would go, what you would do, who you would be.

You sing so sweetly now. Fold your wings demurely and preen your plumage with a manicured beak. Settle into the shadow cast by his wingspan as he hovers high above you.

But your feet, on that perch polished smooth by impatience, still remember when you were a kestrel, my love.


Le Pain Maudit – Pont-Saint-Esprit 15 August 1951

I mutter-made the sourdough starter. Named her. Kept and coddled her. Fed her up each night. Treated her better than my mewling babe, precious wild-at-hearth yeast.

I syphoned-off grimp-blackening scum. Worse than bed-wintered stanklinged misplaced stockings.

Milled and bowled, I kneaded her, reckless cupboarded illumination. Freed up her restless gluten, to rise, rise, rise.

My coddling worked the flour and water, sweet levain in frothing motion. Oven-scorched screeched poetry for breakfast, scarfed with a scanted mouldy jam.

She liberated me, yes, yes, yes, made me dance and rave.

I’m wild-witchlinged now and burning for it. As charcoaled as the crust.


Rewilding

When he goes, she lets her hair grow out of the bob he favoured. She leaves off her bra, and wears the same t-shirt three days in a row. It is the one with the slogan that offended him. This pleases her.

Mould grows in half empty coffee mugs and the washing machine is switched on only when she runs out of underwear.

The cat reclaims her position on the bed and the two of them sleep curled together long into the morning.

In a month she is as he found her, but stronger in the places he assumed broken.


The Significance of Horses in the Dreams of Young Girls

While Sister Mary Bernadette is teaching biology, your classmates doodle horses in their notebooks. At lunchtime, they describe the scent of straw that fills their dreams, the warm snuffle of horse-breath at their throats. All night they ride trit-trot round walled gardens; spend hour after hour combing manes until they shine like silk.

You have nightmares torn around the edges. You lie, tell them you dream of horses too. You know how to be convincing. If you dreamed of a horse you would swing your leg over its back, jab your heel into its flank and gallop far, far away.


Good luck everyone!

Vote for your favourite using the form below. If you have any issues using this form you can also coast your vote via this link: https://form.responster.com/fOFHXp

The Retreat West Awards

We’re really excited to be launching the new Retreat West Awards, the winners of which will also be announced at our first online flash fiction festival later this year (Sept 18-19 – more details coming soon!).

The winners will be chosen by the Retreat West team from all the stories we publish online and in our anthologies between 1st August 2020 and 31st July 2021. So you could already be in the running if you have been published on the website recently or appeared in our latest anthology!

If you haven’t then you have 4 and a bit more months to get submitting to our competitions and be in with a chance of winning.

There are separate categories for Micro stories (100 words) and Flash stories (101 to 500 words) and we will choose a winner and runner-up in each category.

  • Best Micro Fiction Title
  • Best Flash Fiction Title
  • Best Micro Fiction Opening Line
  • Best Flash Fiction Opening Line
  • Best Overall Micro Fiction
  • Best Overall Flash Fiction

There will be an awards ceremony during the closing session of the Online Flash Fest where the winners will be able to see their awards through the screen! We will then send the actual awards out to them.