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Genre ~ Short Speculative Fiction
Publication date ~ July 1, 2024
Est page count ~ 269
Get your copy on Amazon ~ https://amzn.to/3zlFNiu
I’m an Author, Dammit: My Journey as a Short Story Writer
by Lisa Fox
Once upon a time when I was a very small girl with a very large imagination, I decided I wanted to be a writer. Problem was, I wasn’t exactly sure what “being a writer” meant. Like most people, I romanticized the idea of authorship, dreaming about the Great American Novel, and seeing my name on the New York Times Bestseller list.
I wrote angsty poetry in high school, weird poetry in college—still dreaming of that elusive novel but having no clue whatsoever where to start. I didn’t have the life experience to create anything truly meaningful—my world was a blank page with an impatiently blinking cursor.
And with my shiny new degree, I needed to get a “real job.”
Quite by happenstance, I plunged feet first into a career in market research (which has been my “day job” for the last 25+ years). Since “storytelling” data is an essential component of market research, I had become a writer… in a roundabout sort of way.
Years passed. Life happened. That blank page filled with marriage, a mortgage, two boisterous boys, a yellow lab, a golden retriever, vacations to compensate for many, many late work nights. Like many others, I battled for that elusive holy grail known as work-life balance. Every day I squished myself into the sandwich that I’d become as a working mom simultaneously caring for small kids and as an only child caring for elderly parents. I climbed the corporate ladder as fast as my legs would carry me and leaned in so hard I almost fell over.
And then I turned 40.
On a whim, I clicked on a Facebook ad for a writing competition called “NYC Midnight.” (Mind you, this was a moment of Divine Intervention, as I NEVER click on Facebook ads). They were advertising their upcoming Flash Fiction contest. Slightly terrified (and not exactly knowing what Flash Fiction was…) I signed up.
This was the summer of 2016.
I spent the first writing weekend agonizing over the task to craft an Action-Adventure story, set in a canyon, with the appearance of an umbrella somewhere in the mix. All in 1000 words! I drafted on my laptop, I hand-edited on paper walking the kids over to the town pool. I asked everyone I knew to provide feedback on the story. After I submitted, I allowed myself a moment of wanton bravery and posted it on the contest forum page. For days, I received unbelievably helpful and amazing feedback from real writer-writers. I lapped up their commentary like a starving puppy. And I was hooked.
Over the past eight years, I’ve written hundreds of short stories and short screenplays. I’ve become a bit of a writing contest junkie. That blank page and blinking cursor have been fed by prompts and deadlines that have re-awakened the muse I desperately attempted to capture in my youth. My writing is still angsty and weird, but now is driven by a greater depth of love and loss and grief and failure that comes with life experience—and the spark and community I needed to make a teenage dream manifest.
When people learn that I write fiction, they often ask me about my “book.” And by book, I know they mean “novel.”
Nope, I haven’t written a novel. I may never write a novel. That Great American Novel may never happen for me, and I’ve come to peace with that.
After all these years, though, I can honestly say that I finally consider myself a “writer.” I am a proud writer of short fiction.
Some people view short stories as a steppingstone to something “bigger,” others might view it as “less than” a novel because it’s somehow “easier” to write short. I beg to differ. Short fiction is a craft that has its own unique nuance, its own type of beauty. Painting a picture on a miniscule canvas can be even more challenging than having the breadth of a mural. Every word counts. A single image needs to be so profound that it can take a reader through an entire world in a few hundred words and leave them with a feeling or a thought or an idea that can stay with them forever.
Since people’s attention spans are short and schedules busier than ever, I see short fiction rising as an art form. Bite-sized stories will become a new norm. What a beautiful world it would be if our children substituted Tik-Toks and Insta reels for short stories that could transport them to a different time or place, let them reside in someone else’s mind for a few moments. Teach them empathy, help them value language and imagination… perhaps make them better people.
Last year, I published my first collection of short stories, Core Truths, and I’m enjoying the launch of my latest collection, Passageways: Short Speculative Fiction. I have two more collections planned in the next few years and from there, who knows?
After all, I’m an author, dammit!
Book blurb:
Twenty-seven speculative short stories celebrating the value of the journey: how lessons learned traveling the path between two points often transcend the goal of reaching the destination. These tales—including science fiction, fantasy, and horror—introduce characters who traverse unusual and often unsettling routes toward their desired objectives.
A man ventures through the depths of his beloved’s subconscious to save her, only to discover a deep-rooted secret that could destroy everything. A young girl and a newly found friend travel to the Middle of Nowhere, desperate to find a way Out. A teenager struggles to escape the clutches of a demonic blanket inherited from a deceased family member. An “ugly” vampire goes through hell on earth to find his true self and his one true love. A woman revisits her past to determine whether it’s time to pull the plug on a scientific experiment that’s sustained—and devastated—her family for decades.
Passageways is the second short story collection from author Lisa Fox, following her acclaimed debut Core Truths. In these pages, readers voyage through darkness and light, fear and faith; toward understanding and peace. Sanctuary. Self-awareness. Being heard. Being loved. As speculative literary fiction, the stories in this anthology harmonize the excitement and otherworldly escapism that genre-based tales offer with the lyrical poeticism of language that makes storytelling sing.
Purchase Link – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Passageways-Speculative-Fiction-Lisa-Fox-ebook/dp/B0D19Z7S3Q/
Author Bio –
Lisa Fox is a pharmaceutical market researcher by day and fiction writer by night. She survives—and sometimes even thrives—in the chaos of suburban New Jersey life with her husband, two teenage sons, and quirky Double-Doodle dog. Her debut short story collection, Core Truths, was published in April 2023. Lisa’s work has been featured in Amazing Stories, Uncharted Magazine, Dark Matter, Bards and Sages Quarterly, Metaphorosis, New Myths, and Brilliant Flash Fiction among others. Lisa has had work nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for Best Small Fictions and is a previous winner of the NYC Midnight Short Screenplay competition. You can find Lisa and her published work via her website: lisafoxiswriting.com or on Twitter @iamlisafox10800.
Social Media Links –
Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamlisafox10800
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lisafoxiswriting/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisafoxiswriting/
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