Flashtastic Four – A Flash Competition

First up – I’m over at The Creative Identity today, talking about my writing mottos, my literary heroes and telling a joke hardly anyone will get.

Big thanks to the lovely and talented Stephanella for so many good questions (and for having me on!).

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And secondly…

Rob, from the brilliant book site, RobAroundBooks is doing a little challenge. You can read about it in full here. Basically Rob will be reading four flash fiction collections, one of them being mine. Every day he’ll read a story (in some cases two) from each and he’ll give them a score out of five.

As Rob says: ‘a little challenge to pit poor old Nik up against some of the other respected flash fiction writers doing the circuit right now’

So, who am I up against, you wonder…

There’s David Gaffney’s, ‘Sawn-Off Tales‘ (you can read me interviewing him here).

There’s ‘My Goat Ate His Own Legs‘ by Alex Burrett (which sounds brilliant).

And there’s Etgar Keret’s ‘The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God And Other Stories’.

Yes. Etgar Keret. The man who I’ve described not only as ‘the master’ but also the man whose writing changed the way I wrote. Probably my favourite writer.

When Rob (@RobAroundBooks on twitter) let me know he was going to be doing this brilliant exercise he told me to ‘be afraid, be very afraid’ – and I am. I’m also excited and honoured to be mentioned in such highly regarded company and curious to see what he’ll make of us all.

I shall be watching this with interest (and terror!).