We have recently published Karen's Flash Fiction collection, Horse Dreams
I note that we have something in common – we both grew up in the Black Country. Does anything from your childhood influence your stories?
1. Yes, definitely, and ways that took a long time for me to really appreciate. The Black Country is a curious, overlooked place, with strange green edges to it’s boundary (a boundary which often causes debate as to where it really begins and ends!) It was an industrial landscape when I was small, and post industrial by the time I was an adult, and that changing landscape, it’s relics and left behinds have a haunting quality. Many of the working-class people I grew up with worked hard and played hard, and that shift into the Saturday night glamour from the working week felt like a powerful ritual. There was a unique smell to the air of the Black Country which has always stayed with me, of fire and oil and heat (my father was a foundry man when I was small, and I think the smell came home on his overalls!) He was also a keen angler, so the canals that run through the landscape and the country side at the edges were as much a playground for me as the streets and edge lands of our town. But I think I also soaked up a sense of the deep age and history of the place as I grew up. Even the names of places in the town and of the town itself translate into the names of ancient queens (Ethelfleda Terrace) and Norse Gods (Woden’s Borough) Black Country people tell a good tale, with lots of urban myths (like the elephant in the mines below Dudley Zoo) Even the accent has a special magic to it for me and I will become quite irate when people ask if I am a Brummie.
What made you think of the title?
The title comes from one of the stories in the collection, which was itself inspired by something from my work as a child psychotherapist. I often worked with traveller children, one of whom, a very long time ago, said in a whisper that “she wanted to tell me about the horse dreams”. The dream in the story is of course invented, but it captures that quality of magical thinking and the sense that nothing is only what it seems to be. I felt that sense of an invitation to look closer and to find a sense of enchantment in overlooked places really encapsulated the feel of the collection.
How did you come to know the form of flash fiction?
I stumbled on it almost by accident about three years ago when I saw something on social media about something called Writers HQ. They were offering an opportunity to take part in a twenty-four days of flash advent challenge. My curiosity piqued and I read on, found out what flash fiction was, wrote twenty-four very short stories that I shared in their on line forum and I was completely hooked! I still write every week with WHQ, as well as reading and critiquing other writers' work and taking part in on line open mike sessions. It opened a door to another world for me and I never looked back. It is such an encouraging and friendly community. I went on to join the Smoke Long Fitness community as well, writing with them each week, joining writers from all over the world in an online community. It means that I write at least one new story every week and as Ray Bradbury said “it’s impossible to write 52 bad stories in a row” ( which does invite the response “ challenge accepted)
What would you say are the advantages in writing in this very short form?
4. For me, I love the creativity that is produced when there are such tight limits on the form. There has to be a whole narrative arc, whether the story is five hundred, three hundred (or even one hundred) words. Not one word is wasted and you have to get to the very heart of the story you want to tell. I have heard it described as having to arrive late and leave early, diving right into the place where your story is at bursting point. Yet even within this tight structure, there is space for lyrical, poetic language, you can create real tension, and you can be completely genre fluid. I have written flash in every genre except perhaps the western!
Do you write in any other forms?
5. Yes, I have written longer short stories, but they have almost always grown out of a piece of flash that just needed a bit more space for the idea to grow to its full size. Over the summer I finished the first draft of a novel that has been bubbling away in my brain for several years, and I’m about to embark on the hard work of editing and filling in the unforeseen plot holes! What I have noticed though is that the experience of writing lots of flash has made me a good critical friend to myself, I’m always wanting to condense things down where I can, to give the ideas the amount of space they need rather than expanding them to fit the space available.
Can you tell us something about your writing routine?
6. With my on-line groups the writing is often in response to prompts, so my writing week has a shape and a rhythm dictated by that. I really enjoy seeing where my mind goes in response to a prompt and for me the cue is almost always a visual one, a response to an image or something ekphrastic. Nine times out of ten I will get the title or a single phrase and that will start the whole ball rolling. I write really quickly, trying not to get in my own way and letting my unconscious do most of the talking. I don’t edit as I go along very much, but I come back afterwards and give it the level of polishing it seems to need. There is no particular time of day when I’m happiest to write, but I do put my writing time in my diary each week so that it doesn’t get eaten up by other things. If I feel like I’m really struggling with a particular story, I either take the dog out for a walk and let the idea stew away while I’m outside or I switch from my keyboard to writing longhand with pen and paper which also seems to mysteriously shake things loose. I write pretty much in silence or with very quiet Radio 3 when I’m writing something new but like the music louder when I’m editing. I also drink a lot of coffee! Finally, when I’m writing something longer, like the novel, or editing something that feels sticky, I use the Pomodoro method to make it more bite sized and manageable.
Do you have any other projects planned?
I am working on the next draft of a novel. I’m also putting the final touches to a second collection of flash fiction as well as a novella in flash. At the time of writing, I’m putting the final touches to the arrangements for the book launch for Horse Dreams (in the library of the local university) and I’m also getting ready to take the book to Stratford Literary Festival at the beginning of November, where it will be on sale on the local Society of Authors book table. I’m aware that it might seem like a lot of plates to spin, but I came to writing later in life and I’m busy making up for lost time!
You can find your copy of Horse Dreams here.
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