Review by J.L. Corbett
Writer: Ross Jeffery
Publisher: self-published
Release date: 1st June 2020
Price: £2.99 (ebook), £8.99 (paperback)
The novella-in-flash format is more popular now than it’s ever been.
Author: Idle Ink
Answer One Question for The Stay of a Lifetime by Rebecca Houghton
“Have you seen my wife?” says Mr. Blakeney, his hand coming down on the slate tile counter with a thump.
“Ah, hello, sir. We’ve been expecting you,” replies the neatly dressed concierge, his dark red uniform smartly pressed, metallic buttons glinting in the light from the old-fashioned brass desk lamp.
“My wife isn’t here?” says Mr. Blakeney.
Phoebe, or Rapunzel, Revamped by Linda McMullen
Once upon a time, there was a young maiden named Phoebe, blessed with beauty, grace, and intelligence – and enough guile to hide the last, when necessary.
She was the youngest flower of an ancient lineage, the only child of a love-match. She possessed a wide circle of friends who adored her, and openly envied her loveliness. She lived in ease in an ancient house in the country. Indeed, her whole life was a song – except that her parents were in thrall to The Grandmother.
There and Not There by C.J. Dotson
We all read the stories when we were little, didn’t we? A bunch of children go into a wardrobe, or through a tiny door that’s only bricked over sometimes, or find a secret key, go down a rabbit hole, cross a bridge, fall into a book, vanish. Then there’s magic, and adventure, and villains for the children to test themselves against. At the end they come back and no time has passed, no one realized they were gone.
It’s bullshit.
After Feminism by Natalie Marino
Still, a woman wades at the shore of a man’s sea.
When we speak it is too loud, as if we don’t know how.
Quiet’s value imprinted itself when we watched our mothers.
We say yes without listening to the question, without needing
to know what the question is.
Plane Girl by Andrew Stiggers
Though she loves her best mate to bits, Rachel doesn’t believe her for one moment.
“Yes, someday soon, I’ll be flying planes,” Jeany had told her as they were observing from the bar an airline pilot crossing the terminal hall. He’s smartly dressed in his gold-striped uniform.
“Sure, Jeany.” Her friend could never stick with a job. She gets bored too easily, flittering like a moth from lamp to wall light. First there was the hairdresser’s, then the vet’s, and now more recently the dental assistant job. “That’s it—I’ve quit the practice,” she’d announced, tossing her keys on the benchtop after returning to their flat.
Self-Portrait as an Inferno by Jane Burn
I saw the birthing of a crazy phoenix – saw it raise hackles of fire,
span its bright wings of pain, sear the night with a flock of sparks.
It made a spear of embers and flew its pyre into the night –
crackled with vicious feathers, spat its language of waste
Psychedelic Existentialism in Rob Doyle’s “Threshold” by Declan Toohey
In one of the wittier moments in Rob Doyle’s latest book—a sprawling account of one man’s quest for meaning in the pharmacological era—the narrator visits the world-renowned Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. There, among other things, he searches in vain for texts by Maurice Blanchot and Pierre Klossowski, and repositions copies of his own novel to cover the works of rival authors. Observing that the Parisian bookshop is as much a tourist attraction as a place in which to acquire books, he bemoans the many patrons who visit the store solely to be photographed, and who shuffle off with a book or two from ‘usual suspects’ such as ‘Kerouac, Bukowski, Hemingway, and Salinger.’[1]