Thrilled…
Thrilled to have my story named to Fractured Lit’s Anthology Prize Longlist. The titles alone have me excited! Congrats to all the anonymous nominees.
https://fracturedlit.com/fractured-lit-anthology-volume-4-longlist/
Tag: short stories
Baba Yaga’s Foolish Fence
Baba Yaga, her house ever spinning, casts dizzy spells: multiplies weeds’ thorns, exterminates unicorns, allows toxic fungus to fester, boils it in her tea. She piles her human-boned boundary sky high, ten thousand eye sockets blazing.
None can enter.
She’s grown weary of peasants’ petitions: food, shelter, clothes, cures. Endless. (Although, if pressed, she’d confess to finding revenge requests amusing.)
But now, her garden rots, unweeded. Her tunic needs mending. Her chicken-toed shoes stir up her floor’s thick dust. She coughs, covers her warty nose with her head scarf, exposes her balding crown.
Deprived of tender company, Baba Yaga starves.
words and photography ©️2024 Tanya Cliff
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Wigleaf 2023 Longlist
Thrilled to share that this story was selected for the Wigleaf 2023 Longlist! Special thanks to New Flash Fiction Review for believing in the piece. ✨💖✨
Also thanks to Pam Painter, Steve Yarbrough, Katie Williams, and Steve Fuller for all their wisdom and encouragement on this and my upcoming projects.
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New Story Published in Stork Magazine
So excited to share my latest story, “Joan, Existing in the Hours of Daisies and Sunflowers,” recently published alongside the stellar fiction in Stork Magazine. Special thanks to Taylor McGowan for her editorial prowess and fabulous live read on launch day and to Katherine Fitzhugh for the beautiful illustration. 🌻
Also, heartfelt thanks to Pamela Painter for her skilled guidance. Without her, this story would have never blossomed. 🌻
Read the story at https://issuu.com/storkstory/docs/stork_spring_2022/41 🌻
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An Octopus with a Narwhal Tusk by Tanya Cliff — NEW FLASH FICTION REVIEW
An Octopus with a Narwhal Tusk by Tanya Cliff — NEW FLASH FICTION REVIEW
— Read on https://newflashfictionr-saf0s9gzxb.live-website.com/an-octopus-with-a-narwhal-tusk-by-tanya-cliff/
Hey WordPress friends, I’m thrilled to share that my story is live in Issue #26 of New Flash Fiction Review! It’s a flash fiction fast read.
“While Timmy’s puzzle concoctions drive me crazy, I can relate to him. My father abandoned me too. I was sixteen. He had terminal cancer. At least my dad didn’t have a choice.”
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A Teaser…
US Major League Baseball season has been postponed due to the COVID-19, but tomorrow at the godoggocafe.com, we will step up to batting practice with our first drafts in hand. Join me in the Writer’s Workshop for some friendly encouragement, an editorial challenge, and few words from Stephen King. Even if you don’t have a prompt draft, feel free to hop in to the discussion. Participation is welcome at any time.
Stay healthy everyone!
Tanya
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Writer’s Workshop
Exciting News!
I am going to be hosting a weekly Writer’s Workshop over at the Go Dog Go Café on Saturdays, beginning March 7th. Please join me there for a fun, challenging opportunity to stretch your writing skills in the Café’s warm, friendly environment. I love the group at GDG! I’m thrilled to be joining them, especially in a format that explores the power of language in storytelling.
The Writer’s Workshop will stick with a single prompt response each month, limited to 150-300 words, and involve several editing challenges to the same response designed to sharpen prose. The schedule is as follows:
Week 1: The Fastball
This week, I will introduce some element of good prose and/or share encouraging words from favorite authors. Then, I will pitch the Fastball prompt. Participants can link their responses in the comments section, and I will share them the following week.
Week 2: Batting Practice
This week, I will continue the discussion and share the responses from Week 1’s Fastball.
The challenge to participants this week will be to cut at least 10% of words from their response in week 1, tighten their prose. The 10% cut comes from Stephen King’s On Writing, one of several writing books that you will hear me refer to on occasion. The cut might seem arbitrary, but it forces concision and encourages the use of powerful language.
Week 3: Curveball Challenge
And just when you think you mastered it…
This week, I will throw a curveball, a specific challenge designed to improve prose, some element to be added to the response from the Batting Practice in Week 2. We will use this challenge to explore some of the grammatical tools that can be used to create tension and drama on the sentence level in our writing.
I will also show how I handled the 10% cut from Week 2 (including my word counts) and provide links to the Week 2 responses of participants.
Week 4: Players at the Plate
I will sum up the month’s activities, show how I handled Week 3’s Curveball Challenge, and link to all the other participants’ rewrites. Writing is hard work. You can expect a lot of encouragement and praise from me along the way.
I hope you will pull up a chair in the Go Dog Go Café and join me for the Writer’s Workshop. Visit the Go Dog Go Café to learn more.
Tanya
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Did I Say?
Did I say that I want you?
Alice enters the room and stares at Jimmy, waiting. How can he not remember? He yelled her name three times a few minutes ago. Her knees need replacing, and the hallway—stacked with bins of her half-finished crafts and quilts—requires negotiating. He had sounded afraid, almost panicked. She responded as fast as she could hobble, but, now, he looks up at her, baffled.
Alice’s children had warned her about getting involved with a man that late in life. Her daughter had complained, “He just wants someone to take care of him.” Her son had been less tactful, “He is broke. He needs your money.” What money? Her mortgage had been paid off a few months before her husband died (eleven years ago, but it feels like yesterday), and she is the sole the beneficiary of the modest life insurance policy he left behind. It covers the property tax and puts food on the table, not much more than that. She had heeded their warnings for two years, but Jimmy’s persistent pursuit had proven charming. Or maybe she had just grown weary of driving herself around town and pulling the garbage to the curb once a week.
Jimmy takes the garbage out now, at least if she reminds him; and he is a good driver, provided she pays attention and tells him where to go. When the kids ask her about Jimmy’s driving, she ignores them. (She doesn’t tell them about the woman he nearly hit in the parking lot of the grocery store last month or how she had to grab the steering wheel last week when turned the wrong way down Highway 35.) She hides the car keys from him, so he can only drive when she is with him.
He had told her that he was going to rake the leaves out back and then watch the golf tournament on tv. His shoes sit on the mat by the back door, clean, empty. He looks at Alice, vacant, the television remote upside down in his hands. The tv is off, the leaves, not raked. Jimmy turns away and stares at the blank tv screen.
Alice wants to yell at him, no, to scream, but Alice loves Jimmy too much to raise her voice. She walks over to him without saying a word and presses the power button on the remote control. He grins as “Wheel of Fortune” lights up the screen. As he fist pumps a correctly guessed letter, he shreds her dreams in a dignified air of victory.
~
©2020 Tanya Cliff
~
This is my response to Stephen’s Level Up Challenge that combines several prompts. Thanks to all these talented humans for the prompts:
https://godoggocafe.com/2020/02/11/level-up-writing-challenge-2-11-moves-to-the-cafe/
https://godoggocafe.com/2020/02/11/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-february-11-2020/
https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2020/02/10/what-do-you-see-16-february-10-2020/
https://amanpan.com/2020/02/10/eugis-weekly-challenge-love-february-10-2020/
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17 Word Short
We can’t stop people from hating.
We can stop people from hating
behind
triggers
of
automatic
rifles.
~
Words and Photography ©2018 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me
Entry posted in short stories.
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Should I Warn the Neighbors?
“Should I warn the neighbors?”
We are lighting a smoke bomb today. I’m good at this. If the wind is favorable, the smoke will travel to the top of the old, oak tree that towers over my driveway. No one called the fire department in a panic last time. The man across the street lingered in his own driveway sweeping leaves that didn’t exist just so he could watch, but we avoided the sirens and red and blue lights.
Still, it’s a dilemma. Do we alert people or not?
This time we are shooting a stop-motion video in Barbie-doll scale. The smoke bomb for this shoot is full, human-sized. I could engulf a pink, plastic convertible many times bigger than the one my Ken doll occupies. That is a lot of smoke. It should make for a good sequence of stop-motion pictures, unless I am engulfed in smoke too, in which case I will simply keep snapping and hope for the best.
We are using fake blood for this video as we did for the last, “The Fake Guy”. I know a recipe that looks convincing and has a great splatter property. It is made almost entirely of powdered sugar with just a bit of cocoa and a massive amount of red food coloring. Yes, it’s edible. Yes, it’s gross. What is the amount of blood needed for a Barbie-doll bombing accident? Last time, I mixed a cup. I needed a teaspoon. Those dolls were small. I am good at math, but I tend to overdo things.
Ken’s doll double required some post-apocalyptic mutilation. I didn’t want to damage him too much, so I used a small hammer and tapped. That was pointless. Who knew that plasti-Ken had #absofsteel? I grabbed my industrial goggles – no selfies here – and the big hammer and pounded away with all my might. An exhausted 30 minutes later, and Barbie’s beau has a few gaping wounds.
“Should I warn the neighbors?”
What would you say? “Hey, I’m shooting a stop-motion video with Barbie dolls in my driveway. I’m going to be spilling fake blood and lighting a large smoke bomb. Please don’t panic when you see the mini-mushroom cloud rising above my roof line.”
My children think I’m weird and funny. That’s a good thing. It keeps them interested, laughing and engaged. My antics also teach them to think outside of the proverbial, collective box and take creative risks. We will be all hands on the “deck” of my driveway. At least one of them will be standing by with buckets of water should anything go wrong. What could possibly go wrong?
My only real dilemma:
“Should I warn the neighbors?”
~
Words and Photography ©2017 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me
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