FFO, Dark Valentine

Flash Fiction Offensive is back, with Byron Quertermos at the helm.

The first entry is a bitchslap from Kieran Shea called Spanish Lesson. I love stories about average people stumbling into the world of crime either through their own stupid decisions or just plain, dumb luck. Here our narrator pops into a convenience store on one of those long cross-country drives and quickly discovers that he should've waited until the next exit.

The description in the first paragraph about the endless seas of green that are the Midwest is phenomenal. Like the main character, I'm a New Englander currently displaced in the Midwest, and there's still something vaguely terrifying about being in the middle of all these corn and soybean fields... Where the fuck are the trees and the buildings to hide behind?

Anyways, it's the kind of high-octane fun we've come to expect from Mr. Shea and you should check it out.

You also might want to pop over to Dark Valentine Magazine. The first two issues have been great--phenomenal artwork and stories by Nigel Bird, Jim Harrington, Paul D. Brazill and many, many more. It's one of the few magazines successfully printing multiple genres--some great dark fantasy, horror and crime fiction. And this month they're putting up a story every day.