Our Flesh was Bred for This

I have a new story out! “Our Flesh was Bred for This” is in the first issue of Frozen Wavelets, which is free to read at the link.

It’s a flash story, which is unusual for me. I find flash to be exceptionally difficult to write – every time I try, it tends to balloon out to my natural length, which seems to be around 3500-4500 words. I do not have the gift of concision, is what I’m saying, though I do admire it in others. Every time I see a really good flash piece by someone else, I try to study it to see why they’re managing it and I can’t. I think, finally, that it’s down to a ruthless sense of scale. With such a limited word count, there’s no room for tangents, or even for pretty language that serves no purpose other than prettiness. It’s far closer to a vignette, for me – something designed wholly around a feeling rather than an ongoing plot. Anyway, this is mine. I don’t know that I’ll write a whole lot more of them in future, but I’m glad to have achieved a successful flash, even if it’s just the once. And here’s a taster of it:

Death is different for island folk.

It’s an old saying, if not a truthful one. There are islands enough for carnivores. On Kodiak they stake you out for bears, on Komodo you’re left for dragons. Not everywhere is barren of hunting teeth. In most places they’ve come back, feed them up so carefully as we do.

But there are some islands where they never were. Islands of birds and bats, and the only big carnivores are marine, their fish-bellies white around the coast, their easy length swum up along estuaries and into rivers. The great hinged jaw of leopard seals, the smooth sleek lines of blackfish.

Apex predators, all of them…