The Sackings Gossip had awoken the staff room from a monotony-induced slumber. A teacher had been fired. Something to do with harassing female students during class was one of the rumors doing the rounds. Another was that he’d been caught shoplifting from 7-Eleven. Neither would have represented a first at Heartful Eikaiwa, Japan’s largest chain […]

Micro fiction for kids – a workshop that worked
A few weeks ago I was invited to Hiroshima International School to give an author talk as part of their Reading Week program. That was the initial plan anyway, but rather than stand and waffle in front of a hall full of small kids, we instead came up with the idea of doing writing workshops […]
More micro fiction – five new stories
A month or so ago, I posted something about micro fiction and why I’ve found myself drawn to writing it. Call this an update of sorts to share the following handful of micro fiction stories, each of which is either 50 or 100 words in length. […]
On Micro Fiction
Over the last couple of years I’ve been trying to work out how to write good short fiction – mostly in the 1,000-word (or thereabouts) “flash fiction” category – with the eventual aim of putting together a collection to publish in book form. In the past few months or so, however, I’ve also developed an interest […]