It’s 22nd June and National Flash Fiction Day in New Zealand! On this auspicious day, Ad Hoc Fiction, our short-short press, which recently won best publisher 
category in the Creative Bath Awards, is thrilled to publish the everrumble ‘a small novel in small forms’ by Director of NFFD, New Zealand, Michelle Elvy and All That Is Between Us the debut flash fiction collection by K. M. Elkes from Bristol, UK, who was one of the judges for NFFD New Zealand’s micro competition, MicroMadness which culminates today. We love these global connections from authors in different hemispheres. And is doubly exciting that Ken and Michelle are teaching workshops at the Flash Fiction Festival, Bristol UK next week 28-30th June and are launching their books there.
Both collections have received many glowing endorsements from well known flash fiction writers and teachers.
Here’s one from Tania Hershman about All That Is Between Us
“I could dazzle you with well-chosen superlatives or make clumsy attempts to sum up K. M. Elkes’ work, but really what I want to say is: This collection is so good. So very, very good. Whoever you are, whatever you like to read, you need these stories in your life.”
Tania Hershman, author of Some Of Us Glow More Than Others
And one about the everrumble from Christopher Allen.
“A tour de force, Michelle Elvy’s the everrumble is a profound, poetic constellation of notes on the Earth’s ‘alive noises’, the hope that lives in the natural world. Zettie’s story – all her moments of evolving, her capacity to listen, and her gift of becoming all the sounds of the earth – affected me to the core.”
Christopher Allen, author of Other Household Toxins
You can buy both of these brilliant collections now in paperback in several different currencies for worldwide posting directly from the Ad Hoc Fiction online bookshop. Go straight to the bookshop page for All That Is Between Us by K M Elkes here and straight to the bookshop page for the everrumble by Michelle Elvy here. And you can also buy in digital format on Kindle via Amazon. Links to Kindle for each collection are on the bookshop page.
We had a fantastic evening of Flash Fiction on December 9th in Bath at St James’ Wine Vaults. Six writers each read a selection of their stories, representing a wide range of subjects, themes and flash fiction styles. 
First, to say: choosing the winners was difficult! Going from longlist to shortlist was a matter of what grabbed me on first read, whether it was the story, the freshness of the language, the structure, or something unique and surprising that I’d never seen before. But the next stage is when I got tough, because I was actively looking for reasons not to pick stories. I had to get to my top 5 from 20. This is when a judge gets ruthless. A story has to give something back on a second read – and a third read! Any even slight laziness in language – an overused phrase bordering on cliche, a typo – and that made it far more likely that I would discard that story. Also, if the premise was great, an intriguing idea, but the follow-through and the ending just didn’t do it for me, that landed the story in my No pile.
