Flash Fiction Online July 2010
Suzanne Vincent is the editor-in-chief of Flash Fiction Online. That’s what people think anyway. Actually, she’s really a pretty ordinary middle-aged woman packing a few extra pounds and a few more gray hairs than she’s comfortable with. As a writer, she leans toward the fantasy spectrum, though much of what she writes is difficult to classify. Slipstream? Isn’t that where we stick stories when we just can’t figure out where else they go? Suzanne’s first professional publication was right here at FFO, published before she joined the staff: “I Speak the Master’s Will,” — a story she’s still very proud of. While she doesn’t actually have time to blog anymore, she once did. You can still read her ancient posts on writing at The Slushpile Avalanche. Suzanne keeps a house full of kids (3), a husband (1), and pets (too many to number) in Utah, USA. Yes, she’s a Mormon. No, there isn’t another wife. Mormons haven’t actually practiced polygamy since the 1890s. Too bad. She’d love to have another woman around to wash dishes and do laundry.
From Wikipedia: Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937), of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
Lovecraft’s major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely “reason”, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has become a cult figure for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-invalidating entities, as well as the famed Necronomicon, a grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic, fabricating a mythos that challenged the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Christianity.
Although Lovecraft’s readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades, and he is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe in the tone of his writing style.
From Wikipedia: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835-April 21, 1910), better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humanist, humorist, satirist, lecturer, and writer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, leading industrialists and European royalty.
Twain enjoyed immense public popularity, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. American author William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature.”
Tom Crosshill’s fiction has appeared in magazines such as Intergalactic Medicine Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Lightspeed. In 2009, he won the Writers of the Future contest. After many years spent in Oregon and New York, he currently lives in his native Latvia. He’s a satellite member of the writers’ group Altered Fluid. In the past, he has operated a nuclear reactor, translated books and worked in a zinc mine, among other things. Visit him at tomcrosshill.com.
From Wikipedia: Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (24 July 1878–25 October 1957), was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland’s longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.
Polenth Blake lives in England with her pet cockroach. Her website lurks at polenthblake.com.
Indrapramit Das is a writer and artist from Kolkata, India, which in real life is still above water. In 2008, he graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing from Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is currently in Vancouver working towards an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, writing a novel, and expanding his growing collection of short stories. He loves the stories he finds in books, comics, movies, people, places, magazines, music, television, pictures, video games, science, mythology, history, his head, and basically everything, and wants to keep absorbing and telling these stories one way or the other.
Flash Fiction Online’s Founding Editor Jake Freivald lives in New Jersey in a house teeming with life: a wife, nine kids (yes, all from said wife, no twins), two dogs, two cats, and twenty fish.
Lack of qualifications never stopped Jake from taking a job, so when he saw the need for a professional flash-only ‘zine he created Flash Fiction Online. He was astounded when a team of volunteers rallied around the project, and he would like to shut up now so you can read about them.