A fascinating interview here with Fiona J. Mackintosh, who won first prize in our October 2018 Award,judged by Nuala 0’Connor for her historical flash fiction Siren. Fiona, who began writing young, as you can see in the picture of her with the type-writer, is a self-confessed research junkie, writes (in her head) in the shower and stresses the importance of researching “the hell out of a competition” before entering it. She also tells us the music she likes to play while writing, where she writes and about the projects she’s currently working on. We’re longing to read more of her writing – more flash, or her short story collection and also her five novel saga that begins in the early part of the twentieth century sounds wonderful. It’s exciting that the first volume of this will be ready for submission in spring 2019. Fiona ends this interview with some great revision tips for micro writers. We love this – “Revision is like playing your scales over and over”. And there are many more excellent nuggets of writing advice. Read on…
- Can you tell us how your wonderful story Siren came into being?
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Thank you so much for the compliment! As often happens with me, the story started with a single phrase that popped into my head, “She has the juice of silver fishes in her veins.” And then immediately after, I saw the image of the girl putting the cherries over her ear, which we all used to do as kids, right? And (ahem) some of us still do! Then I had to find a way to fill in the middle part of the story, but once I hit on the jealous landlubber admirer, I was off to the races. So the plot fell into place pretty easily; it was the language that took longer to hone.
We are delighted that our publisher, Ad Hoc Fiction is publishing Diane Simmons’ collection, Finding A Way, fifty one linked flash fictions which show one family’s grieving journey over the three years following a devastating loss. Diane is widely published in anthologies and magazines and has been successful in many writing competitions. She is a member of the
Writer, writing tutor and editor Meg Pokrass is well-known for her amazingly inventive prompts. And she uses them herself in her own writing. This is what she says about it — 
by Ad Hoc Fiction and which is available from the 
Vanessa has won multiple awards for both prose and poetry, including a Bridport Prize and the Troubadour. Her flash publications include Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures (Liquorice Fish Books) and the weird/irreal collection Nothing to Worry About (Flash: The International Short Short Story Press at Chester University) as well as many individual publications online and in print. She is author of three short story collections (with Salt and Cultured Llama), a novel (Bloomsbury), and two poetry publications (Pighog and Cultured Llama). She is also commissioning and contributing editor of Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt). She teaches widely 
It’s always a privilege to judge a literary competition, as judge you’re seeing what’s white hot, what writers are writing about now and the way they’re writing about those things. If the long list is representative, popular occupations in 2018 include predatory stepfathers, lost love, childhood traumas, and more benign childhood memories featuring, particularly, the smells of youth. War and dead babies feature too, as they usually do in story competitions. A lot of stories were written in the second person, a POV I have a strong attachment to. Second person alone, though, is not enough to carry a piece if there aren’t several other things going on, in terms of language and story.
Fiona J. Mackintosh is a Scottish-American writer living near Washington D.C. whose fiction has been published on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2018, she has won the Fish Flash Fiction Prize, the NFFD Micro Competition, and the Bath Flash Award and was runner-up in Reflex Fiction’s summer contest and Retreat West’s quarterly themed competition. Her flashes have been nominated for The Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction, and her short stories have been listed for the Bristol, Galley Beggar, and Exeter Short Story Prizes. She was honored to receive a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist’s Award in 2016.
Zahid Gamieldien is an Australian author, screenwriter and editor. You can find him at 
Simon lives as part of a dog dominated family in the Yarra Valley near Melbourne, Australia. He returned to fiction writing in 2017 after a long absence, and in the past year his work has been short listed (Tarbert Festival Oct 2017) and long listed (Bath FF June 2018). In addition his in-progress novel was one of seven finalists in the Pitch Perfect competition at Bloody Scotland Crime Festival 2018. His hobbies include writing, reading, lifting heavy objects and making awful puns.