Month: January 2016

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Tunnel

flash fiction writing prompts illinois river nuclear power plant oct 2008
Photo copyright K. S. Brooks. Do not use without attribution.

Walking through the tunnels made her skin crawl. She focused on the light at the other end and just kept moving.

The echoing sounds of her own steps made it seem as if she were being followed, but she knew that was not possible. Everyone else in the world was dead. There would be no oncoming cars, no marauding miscreants.

Still, from time-to-time, she thought she could hear something. Echoes – just echoes. She stopped and turned to confront her fear. From the blackness behind, the sound of footsteps continued…

Welcome to the Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. In 250 words or less, write a story incorporating the elements in the picture and the written prompt above. Do not include the prompt in your entry. The 250 word limit will be strictly enforced. Continue reading “Flash Fiction Challenge: The Tunnel”

A. L. Kaplan Wins Flash Fiction Challenge

A. L. Kaplan is the Readers’ Choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. The winning entry is decided by the popular vote and rewarded with a special feature here today.

This week, the Reader’s Choice winner is also the editors’ pick, so congratulations – Ms. Kaplan’s story will also appear in our first Editors’ Choice Anthology.

Without further ado, here’s the winning entry:

Continue reading “A. L. Kaplan Wins Flash Fiction Challenge”

Indies Unlimited Staff to be Featured on Radio Show Tonight

deadly reads radio logoTonight (Thursday, January 21, 2016) at 8 pm Pacific time, some of the IU staff are booked (get it? That’s a literary pun) to be on Deadly Reads Radio.

Scheduled to be live on the show are: K. S. “Kat” Brooks, our admin; staff contributors Laurie Boris, Lynne Cantwell, Shawn Inmon, and Gordon Long; with a possible late call-in from Martin Crosbie. Some of the other minions might even drop by.

If you have questions for the staff or would just like to tell them how awesome they are, feel free to call in at (646) 668-2716. Can’t make it tonight? Don’t worry, it’s a podcast, so there will be a link to the entire show available so you can listen at a later time.

We hope to hear from you!

Goodbye Shelfari, Hello Goodreads

When I went to my Shelfari landing page last week to update the widget I use on my blog, I saw an ominous notice: Shelfari is shutting down. Shelfari is merging with GoodreadsThe news won’t be a surprise to those who know that Amazon has owned both Shelfari and Goodreads for the past few years. Goodreads is by far the more popular of the two sites, so it stands to reason that Amazon would consolidate its reader experience (not to mention reader data) there. But a number of readers, authors, and bloggers closed their Goodreads accounts and fled to Shelfari during the Goodreads Bullies incident a few years ago; I can’t imagine they will be thrilled to have their information dumped back onto Goodreads. Continue reading “Goodbye Shelfari, Hello Goodreads”