FOREST themed flash winners

Well done to all who were shortlisted in our themed flash contest and many congratulations to our winners, as chosen by Jeanette Sheppard.

Judge’s report

Thank you to everyone who entered and to the Retreat West readers for creating the shortlist. I read everyone’s work more than once and in a different order each time — I’m always mindful that mood can influence a reading. Around a third of the entries interpreted the theme through setting, where the magical, mysterious, or other-worldly featured in some way. A few entries focused on the magically real. Other flashes were rooted in the everyday, with a forest, or something associated with it, acting as a metaphor for emotional states or relationships. Some writers used language or images related to the theme to drive the narrative. In the end, I chose stories that made me feel something. Each one immersed me in their world through specific details and provided a satisfying ending.


First Place: Fern-seed by Sarah Royston

I loved everything about this flash. This coming-of-age story was a clear winner from the start, growing on me more and more. I was moved by the narrator’s attempts to create a path through a literal and metaphorical forest. I also admired the way the fern-seed of the title is dropped into a conversation between friends, then grows in significance. People, place, and relationships are all evoked through wonderful detailing, a highlight being the friends ‘Shouting for echoes in the mouths of old mines.’ The change in the central friendship is captured perfectly when the young narrator tells us her friend, Becca, has ‘brought actual boys’ to the forest. A fitting and beautifully pitched final paragraph sealed its winning position – past, present, and future coalesce as the narrator approaches the mine in a fern-seed hallucinogenic state. Congratulations to the writer. I enjoyed reading this over and over.


Runner-up: Disenchantment in Three Dishes by Emily Macdonald

The only flash that created a forest from Broccoli! I enjoyed the whimsy/dark humour blend here. What a visual feast this is: ‘brown rice forest floor — blended with eggs, mint, garlic, dill, and cheese — turned to sludge, and the broccoli canopy slid sideways and discoloured as if the dish was hit by a mudslide and felling at the same time.’ The switch to darker humour is neatly done as the narrator becomes a secretly malevolent force, reaping revenge on her pretentious Instagram foodie friends by duping them with her style-over-substance dinner parties. A terrific ending as the narrator attempts to escape a food forest nightmare, only to leave a breadcrumb trail behind. An inventive take on the theme.


Third Place: The Point of Disappearance by Stephanie Percival

A dramatic shift in tone from the previous flash, this is a moving, dark, and compelling modern day fairy tale. A forest glade offers peace despite what ‘they’ say about a witches’ meet and a spirited away girl. The subversion of expectations is handled nicely in this story, particularly the traditional wicked witch in the forest trope. When the narrator runs away at night into the forest to escape her brutalised life, only to be snatched away, we fear the worst. However, the woman with ‘arms scarred and pocked like bark’ turns out to be someone who reflects the narrator’s own experiences and offers a sense of hope. The ending is there all along but is well hidden.


Congratulations everyone! Sarah wins £200 and Emily and Stephanie win £100 each.

The next themed flash deadline is fast approaching! Get all the info here.

This is the final year of this contest and in 2023 we are launching a new online journal, WestWord, instead. Submissions will be open for the month of January for publication in April 2023. We have decided to make this edition a themed one and the theme is VISION.

We want short stories, flashes and micros on the theme and all writers selected will receive a share of submission fees. Get all the submission info here.

2022 Opening Lines Comp Shortlist

Well done again to all who made it to the longlist. It has been a hard decision to make at this stage as there is so much to recommend about all of the novel openings that were longlisted.

So huge congrats to the authors of our 10 shortlisted novels.

Shortlist

  • And Then She Fell
  • Big Girls Don’t Cry
  • Blue Is Not A Colour
  • Dog’s Cottage
  • Earth In The Sky
  • Lifesaver
  • Scott/Shackleton
  • Split Fortune
  • The Embrace
  • The Picasso Puzzle

We’ll be re-reading again and announcing the results as soon as we can! Good luck to all – no telling which is yours though as we’re still reading anonymously!

May Monthly Micro Winners

Congratulations again to the writers of our shortlisted stories. Here are the results!


First Prize Winner: The Secret to a Maze is to Keep Turning Left by Keely O’Shaughnessy

Why we chose it: We loved the rhythm, the energy and the imagery. It really encapsulates both friendship and a snapshot of a moment in someone’s life and there was a sense of hope at the end that this summer, although over now,  would be an important, lasting memory.


Second Prize Winner: How to Catch and Keep a Kiss by Steph Percival

Why we chose it: We loved how vividly these characters were brought to life. Fantastic images of kisses like fireflies in the jar then fluttering around. How it ends gave such a sense of happiness and hope despite even though the kisser was dead.


People’s Prize Winner: Catch of the Day by Anne Soilleux

The People’s Prize was a very close run race this month with the two leads swapping right until the last minute, so we would also to extend a special mention to Iqbal Hussain for his story Always Playing Catch-Up.


Shortlisted Stories

Always Playing Catch-Up by Iqbal Hussain – Read it here

Anti-gravity by Paddy Gillies – Read it here

The Lock Box by Alva Holland – Read it here

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Lipstick But Were Too Afraid to Ask by Dreena Collins – Read it here

Rainbow by Stephanie Fluckey – Read it here

CATCH by PJ Town – Read it here

Catch the Drips by Lily Peters – Read it here


Keely and Steph win the cash prizes, and Anne wins feedback on a flash story up to 1000 words.

Well done to everyone!

We’ll be back with the next Monthly Micro prompt on 6th June.

Opening Lines Comp Longlist

Many thanks to all who sent in the start of their novel for our Opening Lines contest. There are so many fab novels being written!

We have our longlist – congrats to all who made it and commiserations to those who didn’t!

  • A Doorway in Venice
  • An Inconvenient Human
  • And Then She Fell
  • Big Girls Don’t Cry
  • Blue Is Not A Colour
  • Blessed Women
  • Deadboy
  • Death in Miniature
  • Dog’s Cottage
  • Earth In The Sky
  • Evermore
  • Leaf And Sky
  • Lifesaver
  • My Name Is Perry
  • Scott/Shackleton
  • She Lost The Sun
  • So Fairly Bound
  • Split Fortune
  • Sunblock
  • The Embrace
  • The Gospel of Eve
  • The Life Of Our Times
  • The Paper Saint
  • The Picasso Puzzle
  • The Smell of Pearls
  • The Scattering

We’ll have the shortlist and results in June – good luck everyone!

May Monthly Micro Shortlist

Well done to all who made the longlist and congrats to the writers of our shortlisted stories. Please honour the spirit of the competition and vote for the story which you think is the best – not the one you’re guessing your friend wrote! And if you’ve been shortlisted remember to celebrate anonymously 🙂 The prompt this month was “Catch”.

Vote for your favourite from these 10 fab stories to win the surprise People’s Prize. Our judging team are busy re-reading to choose the winners of the cash prizes. Voting is open until 23.59 (UK time) on 23rd May 2022. Results will be announced on Tuesday 24th. Good luck everyone!


Catch of the Day

Chips and Scraps : Sharing a bag on the way home from school. The bus shelter smelt of fags and wee, but when you kissed me, you tasted of salt and vinegar.

Hand Battered Cod and Triple Cooked Chips : We thought it would be ironic for a wedding breakfast. You spilt ketchup on your rented suit, but we laughed anyway.

Plaice and Chips Twice : Every Friday for twenty years.

Large Chips : Bought near the hospital after your scan, left uneaten.

Tesco Fish and Chips for One: I scrape them in the bin. Now you’re gone, I’m not hungry.


Always Playing Catch-Up

1970s: Placenta around throat. Intervention from midwife. Slap! Blue skin turned pink, alive, “screaming your lungs out” (Mother).

1980s: Didn’t see glass door. Tears, gashes, copious blood – “otherwise no harm done” (Father).

1990s: School trip to Greece. Pitching ferry. Man overboard! Rescued by lifeguard. Pride dented, but “lucky to be alive” (Headmaster Staniforth).

2000s: Late for work. Missed train. Took car instead. Later, “Worst rail tragedy for a decade” (Huw Edwards).

2010s: A momentary loss of focus, busy junction. “An inch to the right and …” (Dr Sharma).

2020s: A blot on the page. Black on white. “At last” (me).


Anti-gravity

He is kissing the filigree of white lines on the inside of her wrist and she pulls away and reaches for the bottle. It’s been a month now and she never lets it go longer. He’s starting to make plans, talk about their future. Like they all did. There are some children with a teacher, in the park across from them. They are playing a game, blindfolded, where they partner up and one has to fall backwards and the other has to catch them. Let me in, he whispers. But he doesn’t know what happened last time she did that.


The Secret to A Maze is to Keep Turning Left

The corn is at its tallest where we enter.

Buttery silk tassels catch in our curls. Arms outstretched, we twist off the lower leaves as we run,

leaving them

xxxxxxxscattered in

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxour wake: breadcrumbs for anyone bold enough to follow.

Our footfalls echo over sun-baked ground. We’re abuzz for boys wearing cut-off shorts and for stolen cigarettes we’re too chicken to try.

Come September, on opposite sides of the county, we’ll pin up identical Polaroids, XOXO inked in their frames, our closeness a glossy, laminated memory.

Spiralling towards the centre, we race to outrun the shadows at summer’s end.


The Lock Box

The small once-shiny box lies at the bottom of the wardrobe, dusty among the discarded shoes, belts, old train tickets, receipts for things long since used, forgotten, misplaced.

Inside the box lies a curl of auburn hair forty years old.

She doesn’t know what to do with the box now he’s gone. Her time is limited – she knows this. She can’t leave it behind for others to find, to become used, forgotten, or misplaced. She can’t ask people to remember what they don’t know, what they’ve never known.

And the box catch is rusty now, corroded by time and tears.


Catch the Drips

A bright light spills dark shadows over my new-born’s eyelids. Her weight is nothing, a floating lightness.

They are all present – grandmothers, great-aunts and sisters alike, living and dead – to see me breast feed for the first time. My neck prickles under their collective, anticipatory gaze.

Everyone has a tip:

‘Careful with the head!’

‘Watch the nipple!’

‘Catch the drips!’

My mum tells me – with treasonous pursed lips – that I am too tense.

The baby shrinks in my hold, disappearing with hunger –

I wake.

In the dark quiet, I can hear the beat of her unborn heart.


How to Catch and Keep a Kiss

You blew me kisses from the front doorstep, stooped in your dressing-gown, as I left for work. I’d mime catching them like a cricket fielder, shouting, “Howzat!” and reached into the air. You’d grin.

When your illness made you weaker, the same ritual applied, with a backstop catch at the bedroom door. Your smiles muted by pain.

These days I keep those kisses in a jar. When I wake in darkness, hollow with missing you, they glow like fireflies. I unscrew the lid, they fly about me fluttering, until I feel them gently settling on my skin with a ‘shush’.


Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Lipstick But Were Too Afraid to Ask

The lipstick was in the air before the word had left my sister’s mouth.

‘Catch!’

My panic raced and arced in unison with the gift. This precious gift. I watched it rise and fall towards me. And I saw adolescence. New decisions. Fear — all looming up behind.

Ham-fisted, it fell through my sausage fingers to the ground.

For a beat, terror hit. I thought she would be furious, sad. Maybe she would walk away — turn, head shaking, brows down. Perhaps.

But I should have known.

My sister simply laughed and laughed. Stayed nearby. Comforted me.

And then threw another lipstick.


Rainbow

It always snags on my sweater; strands of wool pull free like candy floss. My mother told me to return it—why would I want it—he said keep it with sarcasm imbedded in the words like shrapnel. I saw a rainbow in it the other day when I tilted it toward the sun. While looking at the rainbow I saw a tiny reflection of my eye, red from all the crying. He came to the door, he did not have a key anymore, and I slipped it off and threw it—lightly—in the air and he caught it.


CATCH

The soldier stops, ruffles her hair. She forces a giggle and steps back a few feet.

“Play with me!”

She throws him her green ball. He throws it back.

To and fro. To and fro.

She lets the ball slip from her fingers and it bounces away, exactly where she wants it to. With two skips she’s there at the half-ruined wall – the hiding place.

She picks it up. It’s heavy, but she’s been practising with lumps of concrete.

She pulls the pin. Counts to three. Throws it with both hands. Dives behind the wall.

This is for her father.


Please vote using the form below. If you have any problems with the form, you can also vote via this link: https://form.responster.com/mlL4UB

May Micro Longlist

Thanks so much to all who entered your “catch” inspired stories. We had 119 entries so first prize is £178 and second prize is £119, with the people’s prize to be decided. The shortlist will be published on Monday

Thanks so much to everyone who sent us their words. We enjoyed reading them all. Well done to our longlist below. No telling which is yours though!

Longlisted Stories

  1. … le fragrant délit …
  2. Affair
  3. Always Playing Catch Up
  4. Anti-gravity
  5. Catch
  6. Catch of the Day
  7. Catch the Drips
  8. Dreamcatcher
  9. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Lipstick But Were Too Afraid to Ask
  10. How to Catch and Keep a Kiss
  11. In the Red House
  12. Feet, Part of Iron. Part of Clay
  13. Fielding
  14. Rainbow
  15. Singing the Song of the Sea
  16. Summer at Ted and Nancy’s Beach House
  17. Survival
  18. Talons
  19. The Lock Box
  20. The Perfect Catch
  21. The Secret to a Maze is to Keep Turning Left
  22. The Summer When the Heat Gets Too Much
  23. They Sang “Oh, I’ve Got a Feeling’ Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”
  24. Timing is Everything
  25. You Couldn’t Catch a Cold

Good luck everyone! We’ll have the shortlist on Monday.