Welcome to Issue 3
Editorial
Well, here it is at last! The long-awaited sequel to Flash Dances. For the last two months we’ve been collecting entries for the Flash Fiction competition from places as far away as America and Uzbekistan.
There were over 300 stories and poems, so you can imagine what a struggle than represents in terms of collating them and organising them into sections.
Right now, as of Easter, we’re sifting them for inclusion in the anthology; there will certainly be more than 100. At the same time our lovely judges Val Lee and Paul Burstyn have chosen a lucky winner in each category (40/300/ 600/ 1000 words), and each will get £100. Runners-up will be in the anthology, for sure.
Poetry caused us most problems, because we had some striking verses, but few of them qualified for a flash collection - poets seem to have difficulty finding narrative shape and a good pay-off at the end. This lack of a narrative conclusion also excluded a lot of prose.
We’re also looking into illustrations and cartoons for the book, and if anyone would like to work with us on those, we’d be delighted to hear from them so please Contact Us.
Once we’ve chosen our contributors, the next stage is to get their names on a contract and to enrol them in the Gay Authors Workshop. But with any luck we should be able publish a fine and fizzy miscellany in time for readers to take it to the beach.
We shall be asking some of our entrants who don’t make it that far if we can publish their work in this e-zine. Just because it doesn’t get into the book doesn’t mean that it has no value.
In the meantime we thank everyone who has contributed. The interest has been over- whelming and we are humbled.
Contents
- Iceland - Scot Douglas (39 words)
- Cheetah - John Dixon (24 lines)
- Blackpool Lights - Borderline (24 lines)
- Enter Sandman - Alia Jenkins (130 words)
- Mother Love - Howard Bradshaw (180 words)
- Sexbot - Craig Binch (410 words)
- Little Red Cycle Shorts - David Roddis (500 words)
- The Wrong End - Peter Scott-Presland (515 words)
- Babygate - Craig Binch (520 words)
- What the Dentist Saw - John Grendel (525 words)
- Scotch Mist - Peter Scott-Presland (660 words)
- Fanning the Flames - Laurence Sullivan (740 words)
- Little Miss Muffet - Susan Miller (980 words)
- On Your Way - John Dixon (1170 words) STAR STORY
Legal Notice:
All stories and other materials remain the copyright of the individual authors, and no downloading is permitted or licensed. If anyone wishes to use any of the material herein, they should apply to the author(s) via the publishers.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the author/publisher.
No AI Training:
Without in any way limiting the author's exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to 'train' generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The publishers and the authors reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
This publication is entirely created by humans.
If you would like to join Gay Authors Workshop see How to Join GAW.
If you would like to submit a story for the next edition, please see HERE for more information.
The deadline is 30 June 2026.
If you'd like details of future writing workshops, or to join the mailing list, please contact Peter Scott-Presland.
Like what you see? Think you can do just as well – or even better?
We always welcome feedback, comments, brickbats, suggestions, or large boxes of chocolates. If you want to talk to us or send us stories, please contact us. We're hungry for stories – as well as chocolates!