The fourth book for Chapbook Week is The Quiet Part Loud by Tyler Barton.
This chapbook was one of the first Split/Lip Press books I read when I started working for them in 2020, and I was blown away. The stories cover that time period between the teenage years and adulthood, when you should maybe know better but still do random shit anyway, and it’s fun and exhilarating even if part of you is embarrassed. The characters are all people you’ve known, or people you were. Each story sucks you in but leaves you wanting a little something more—just enough so you randomly think of the characters like they’re old friends and wonder what they’re up to now.
The third entry for Chapbook Week is Girlmine by Erica Soon Olsen.
The “Daphne” stories are among my favorite because of the way the well-known character orients you to an extent, then completely turns what you know upside down. The sense of place in every story is perfection, and I couldn’t help but notice it as it’s something I struggle with in my own writing. “The Iron Ranger” is especially spot-on in terms of location and description.
This tiny book is part of the INCH series from Bull City Press. Get your copy HERE.
My second title of Chapbook Week is Love Letter to Biology 250 by Chella Courington.
The stories in this chapbook blur the line between biology and everyday life, often in a surreal, almost magical way. Each piece gave me a pleasant flashback to college biology courses, which is amazing because I didn’t enjoy the class at the time. I only wish I had Courington’s innovative framework back then so I could search beneath the facts for stories.
Each piece is great, but my two favorites are “Et Cetera” and “Smack.” You can get this flash fiction chapbook from Porkbelly Press.
I’ve been reading a lot of amazing fiction chapbooks lately and want to highlight them. First up is The Swell of Seafoam by Keely O’Shaughnessy.
I met Keely when I worked as a Priority Editor at Flash Fiction Magazine and got to know her writing from there. This micro-chap contains five pieces of flash fiction “from amongst the waves.” The sea almost takes on a character role in these stories, along with parents, siblings, stepsiblings. They touch on how complicated familial relationships can be, paralleled with the mysteries of the ocean.
I love all of these stories, but this line from “Floatation Therapy in the Subjunctive Mood” sticks with me:
“[…] what if, once he was gone, I didn’t have to feel my body expand as I buried my face in the pillows letting out big, heaving sobs […]”
Like many of the other pieces I’ve had published recently, this started in a Kathy Fish workshop. It’s a piece of microfiction, so we already had strict word constraints (150 words or less). To add to the challenge, Kathy gave us a list of words to use—either in the piece itself, or as a jumping-off point. I used five of the ten words for the fun of it, though they definitely gave me the root of the story as well.
Other pieces published from Kathy Fish’s workshop:
I wrote a craft essay for Flash Fiction Magazine about creating characters in flash fiction. With such constraints, it’s easy to think something’s gotta go – plot, characters, a turning point. How can you find room for it all? Read the article for my insight.
If you didn’t know I was a poet… well, you’ll soon find out why I keep that side of me under wraps.
In all seriousness, I’m proud of this acceptance because it came from THE ANGRY ROBOT running things at Versification Zine. It took me five tries of five line poems before I earned this acceptance. It was quite the rush that night, and now, seeing my poem in print… I’m really glad it’s paired with one of my favorite photographs of all time.
I love celebrating National Flash Fiction Day by reading flash pieces by my friends and new-to-me authors. I especially love the 25 writing prompts over 24 hours! This year a friend and I got together to write for some of those prompts on Saturday night. Sunday we polished our work and submitting pieces to The Write-In.
I’m pleased that four of my pieces were accepted for publication! You can read them here:
You can see the prompt and other writers’ responses by clicking the tag on each post. It’s so fun to see how people interpret the same prompt in such different ways!
November is commonly known as National Novel Writing Month for writers, whether you participate or not. I’ve tried it off and on over the years, winning some, giving up some throughout the month. I’ve written a young adult book, a middle grade book, and a few story collections. But overall it’s hit or miss for me because I’m still not really sure I have a good novel in me.
When Thirty West Publishing House suggested a different approach to NaNoWriMo, I was all in. They called it #antiwrimo. Instead of one author writing a novel in a month, 30 authors would write one together.
Yes. A collaborative novel.
We had a Google doc for the book and a separate one for notes. On November 1st, the first author started the story. On the 2nd, the next author wrote their chapter. And so on. Some days had two authors because everyone wanted a part of this project. I wrote the 24th chapter and it was… wild. I was trying to keep up with the chapters as they were written so I’d have an idea of what to write myself. But then my day arrived and the story was in a totally different place. It was wild. And fun.
After some meetings for edits and consistency and a cover art contest, the final product came out at the end of May. And it’s amazing.
See?
It was definitely a fun experience to work with other writers like this. As someone who has always seen writing as fairly solitary (with the exception of writing groups), it was nice to be a part of something so massive. You can get your own copy of the book here, along with other amazing titles—I especially recommend Little Feasts and Spells of the Apocalypse.
Allison Renner Writes 