My flash fiction story “The Canal” was shortlisted for The Molotov Cocktail’s latest quarterly flash contest: Flashpocalypse! All apocalypses other than pandemics were welcome, and in the end eleven stories placed, with the top three writers taking home cash awards. You can read all the winning Flashpocalypse entries online now.

I’ve been submitting to these contests for a few years now, so I feel like making the shortlist is progress, especially now that this makes twice; I previously had a poem shortlisted for The Molotov Cocktail’s annual Shadow Award in 2019.

“The Canal” was an extensive rewrite and slashing of words from a story I first wrote back in the mid-1990s. When I opened up the old draft to take another look for this contest, I was appalled at my early writing and craft (what craft?), but I thought there might be a kernel of a story there I could pull out and develop into something much better. I’m happy with the results and now I’m submitting “The Canal” to other potential markets.