image used under creative commons license from Flickr user midnightcomm

Two months ago, I discovered that some fellow indie writers were creating a “flash fiction” anthology that would span genres. I was very interested. The main stipulation: all stories had to be under 1,000 words.

One thousand words really isn’t a lot. (The Lead Cloak is more than 100 times as long) It’s hard to do much in that short space, but that’s what appealed to me.

I made the decision to do something I’ve never done before–I wrote the story on my phone. My thinking was that writing on my phone would help me conserve words (there’s a reason emails coming from phones are shorter than what you type at a computer). And my second reason for writing it on the phone is that I ended up writing a significant portion of the story with my infant son cradled in my arms. Son in one hand, writing a story on my phone in the other. A unique experience all around.

“Eleventh Hour Brother” is what came of it. It’s an Arthur Beautyman mystery, which is exciting too, because readers haven’t seen Arthur or Ruth since 2012.

Unfortunately, having a son meant I didn’t get the story done in time. So then I wasn’t sure what to do with it. There’s not a lot of places to sell such a short piece of fiction. Finally I decided to go with the simple answer–make it free.

The site Creative Colloquy accepted the story, and you can read it for free on their website. The South Sound literary site has a monthly event, and I’m happy to say that I will be reading this story aloud at the September 29 event at B Sharp Cafe here in Tacoma.

If you want to know more about the mystery… this story actually has a real life equivalent. Go read the story, then come back and read this Seattle Times article from 2006. The story caught my eye back then. I never guessed it would come back eight years later.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading.