Recently we set a challenge to two writers – Terrance Gonzo & Ed Spencer. It followed a conversation down the boozer about social media, withering attention spans and the yawnathon that is so much modern literature. Where’s the aggression? Where are the really belly laughs?
We wanted to create fiction that responded to that.
And we wanted a new style of fiction or type of book that conformed to our ethos.
Stories that laugh at the darker aspects of the human experience.
Work that says something not only about people, but the systems and ideas that govern our lives.
Satire, speculative fiction and anything blackly comic.
Brutalist writing, laughing like a screwdriver.
Though we may rail against dwindling attention spans and our breakneck consumption culture, we have to accept it.
People want to be entertained – and fast. But they still want quality.
We saw a real opportunity to respond to this desire: Bite size fiction that maintains the highest of literary standards. Indeed, writing that pushes the boundaries of what modern fiction should be.
This isn’t Flash Fiction – though that does have its place in these collections – this is Short Fiction, somewhere between story, flash, thought, snapshot, vignette, and skewed poetry, slices of experience to give impressions & moods, designed to amuse, frighten and strike a chord, something to read in doses, to dip in to. And like dark chocolate with odd flavours, you may not want to eat it all at once. Some stories really do go nowhere – others are fully formed – but as a whole, these two books provide an unforgettable experience, and an often brutally funny take on the world.