So early June my piece ‘Beach Night’ was published by Capsule Stories! I only just got around to taking a pretty picture of the book for social media/this blog and so this post is a little late :’)
It’s a little piece about nostalgia and The Good Old Times and the looming future and you can read it here .
You can also find a thread of my favorite pieces from the book here.
And you should definitely buy the book here and support small publishers!!
Hope you enjoy it!!
Love,
Lotte
Yay, this week TWO of my horror(ish) flash-fiction pieces were published by the kind people of Not Deer Magazine! They are both very short, 300 words or less, great for a little in between shiver-session.
The first published was ‘The River Washes’ and here’s a quote:
‘I remember the river.
The water, when it was not me, when I was not it.
I remember the pain, the shock of cold.
The stars in the sky.
The underside of the bridge floating past, your eyes watching me go, then the deepening darkness. The river coursing around me, through me, from me. Pulling me apart till I was more water than person.’
The second was ‘Honeysuckle’ and here’s a quote:
“The air is honeysuckle sweet from the summer warmth still hanging between the trees, resting on the moss, clinging to your skin. But my footsteps are cold and fog dances around me as they evaporate the warmth of the sun, the warmth of your hands.”
So please check them out and if you like them please let me know 🙂 And also check out the other pieces Not Deer Magazine publishes, because they are always great quality and really manage to strike this specific type of beautiful, creepy not-quite-traditional horror that I love.
Love,
Lotte
Friday my flash fiction piece ‘Mae’ appeared in Second Chance Lit’s newest issue, and you can check it out here.
The story is really dear to me so I hope people will like it! Here’s a bit of a teaser:
“Mae loved the carnival.
She loved the bright, flashing lights in the dark, the sweet candy smells on the summer
sea breeze, the blaring music, the endless crowds. It was something to escape to. Something that
stayed the same, summer after summer.”
So please check it out and if you like it please let me know 🙂
Love,
Lotte
~
Thank you for reading!
this spring was originally published by Capsule Stories in their Spring Issue 2021. It was actually the first poem I’ve ever submitted and also the first poem of mine that’s ever been published! I’m still so excited they chose it and that it looks so cool in the paperback.
I wrote this piece after I was getting out of my second academics related burnout (or, rather, the same burnout that I never let myself recover from) in January 2020. I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, but for the first time in my life I was truly willing to just let go. A willingness to just let the world be without having to throw all my energy into it, an understanding that things will manage without me. I also love gardening and nature so I used that imagery because gardens often needs a lot of maintenance while in the wild things just seem to grow wherever. It makes me jealous sometimes.
I wrote this poem mostly for myself, never thought about publishing it till I saw Capsule Stories’ theme. I never thought my poetry was really suitable for publishing, but maybe I’ve been selling myself short. Anyway, it’ll mean different things for different people, but I’m glad they seem to relate to the burnout feeling of wanting to just crawl away.
If you enjoyed my story, please like, comment, share and/or follow for new updates, or read some more!
~
Today my first ever published poem ‘this spring’ appeared in Capsule Stories’ new Spring issue ‘In Bloom’. You can buy it here and read my poem and all the other great works in there. But I was also allowed to post a screenshot of my poem on my twitter, which you can find here.
So please check it out and if you like it please let me know 🙂
Love,
Lotte
(665 words)
It was a Saturday night. The city was buzzing with excitement, flashing neon signs and speeding taxi headlights lighting up the streets, feverish music thumping through open windows and locked doors. Promise hung in the air like smoke, intoxicating people prowling the sidewalks in search of new dangers to entertain themselves with.
I could have been down there with them, finding my own way through the night, finding my own excitement between the lights, but no. I had to be on a high roof, shivering in the cold, trembling at the thought of those same sidewalks so many feet beneath me.
Read More » This was my first year of writing regularly. I made a schedule and managed to show up regularly to keep writing. In many ways it was a good distraction from everything, and it gave me something to work on in a world that feels out of control.
But it was also my first year of submitting to literary magazines! Before that I’d only participated in a handful of contests, but this year I was really dedicating myself to submitting. And it paid off, because I got published four times!
I submitted to 36 literary magazines, got 29 rejections and 2 acceptances (5 still pending). I submitted to 22 contests, got long listed once, shortlisted twice, and won first prize once.
My first (ever) publication was in Popshot Quarterly, my flash fiction piece Soil, which you can find online here.
My second was an old piece called Summer Sounds, which I had entered into the Reflex Fiction Spring contest, where it didn’t quite make the longlist. But they were kind enough to published it anyway. You can find it here.
My third was actually the first flash fiction piece I wrote ever. After many rewrites and a few rejections, Call of the View was published this October by The Cabinet of Heed, and you can find it here.
And my final publication of the year, and maybe the biggest surprise, was when I won the Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest with my story Ice. It was also on the Weird Christmas podcast (voiced by me) and you can find both here.
I also posted several stories on this blog: The Old Man, Darlings, A Shadow Followed Me, Luck, Road Kill, Wanted: Dead or Alive and my creepy Christmas Advent series: The Snowpeople, Shortcut, The Wild Hunt and Regeneration.
All in all I’m really pleased with this year, writing wise.
Happy New Year, and may 2021 be less chaotic
xx Lotte
This is so exciting! For the second year in a row I entered into the Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest. I love Christmas, I love writing weird stuff, so this is perfect for me. Last year I didn’t make the honorable mentions, but this year I got an e-mail a couple of weeks ago that my story was among the final ones would be on the podcast!
I got to read my own story (you can find the podcast here, my story begins at 61:00) which was both cool and scary as I’m not a native speaker, but I think I did my best. I was already really happy with that!
But today the final results came in… and my story ‘Ice’ won first prize!!!
You can find it here together with 2nd prize winner and all the honorable mentions (all such great quality!) so please check out my story and all the other stories and the podcast and the rest of the Weird Christmas site. If you like dark folklore and strange Christmas things, I promise you’ll enjoy the podcast and the rest of the blog (I know I do).
And if you enjoy ‘Ice’, there are more creepy Christmas stories on here as well.
Okay that’s it.
*insert me doing a happy dance because I’m so excited*
Merry Christmas,
Lotte
(348 words)
Christmas has come and gone. People are inside sleeping off their Christmas dinners, bundled up by the fire. There’s no one out in the cold night to see the old man limping through the dark carrying a big brown bag and a shovel.
After a while of searching, he drops his bag by a patch of recently disturbed earth. He pauses to catch his breath, making little clouds in the cold air, then he plunges his shovel into the ground.
For a long time, the man digs. Sweat drips from his brow down to his white beard. His muscles burn, his joints scream, his face is twisted in pain and exhaustion. He can feel places in his body where the corners are coming loose, where he’s too worn out. If only he can hold it together till he gets home. Just a little bit longer.
But he’s already had such a long night.
Finally, the shovel hits wood. The old man grits his teeth. Another few hard digs, and the coffin splinters open, exposing a fairly fresh dead body. He looks it over, mentally ticking off the ones already in his bottomless bag, guessing he has enough to last another year. He can go home. He whistles, long and low, and in the distance bells start ringing across the quiet graveyard.
The old man sighs deeply, looking up at the cold stars above. Everything hurts, and he is so, so tired.
It’s hard work, staying immortal. It used to be easier, when he could just snatch naughty children from their beds on his yearly round and no one would bat an eye. But it doesn’t work like that anymore.
He looks down again.
Still, it’s better than nothing.
With the last of his strength, groaning in pain, he wrestles the corpse into the bag, and climbs out of the grave.
The sleigh is already waiting for him, bells jingling gently. His bones creak and protest as he climbs on with the bag full of bodies, but he manages.
He flies away into the night, dreaming of new limbs.
~
Thank you for reading!
This story is part of my Creepy Christmas Advent tradition, where I post a creepy Christmas flash fiction piece every week in the weeks leading up to Christmas. This was the last story this year, but you can find more here and my other not Christmas themed stories here. Please comment and like and share if you enjoy any of my stories, it’s always really nice to see people like them 🙂
Merry Christmas
~
(349 words)
He smiled. The sleigh was ready.
All the reindeer were in position, their harnesses recently polished, their thick coats combed only this morning. The front seat was lined with soft pillows and in the back a big bag was waiting to be filled. But the thing he prized most were the little sleigh bells hanging on a string all around the edge of the sleigh.
The bells were a relatively recent addition but he liked them very much. They had become his signature, really. Before he had them, his arrival was much less recognizable. He’d heard it be described as a flock of geese, as a wild magical wind. Some even believed it was a party of old gods out hunting on a cold midwinter night.
The thought made him chuckle. It was only him, after all.
He wouldn’t really call it a hunt, either. It was more of a sport. Admittedly, it was always nice to have the pantry well stocked for the long North pole winters, but it wasn’t really about that.
What he loved was the cold air on his face, his heart beating with the thrill of it all, the little screams from below.
He took one of the little silver bells and shook it gently. A high note rang out through the night.
What terror they must feel when they hear the bells ringing, when the sleigh’s shadow falls over them. What horror must fill them as they run away on their little legs, as he chases them down, getting closer and closer, till he can reach out and break their tiny, delicate necks with just one gloved hand.
He shivered with anticipation.
The reindeer stomped their hooves, waking him up from his reveries. Little clouds rose from their large noses as they shook their heads, muscles quivering, growling with impatience. They were already looking forward to their share.
‘Ho, ho, ho,’ he laughed at the eager animals.
They were right, it was time to set out. He climbed on and shook the reins. The sleigh rose up into the dark night, bells ringing.
~
Thank you for reading!
The Wild Hunt is inspired by a mythological phenomenon, called, you guessed it, the Wild Hunt. It’s often described as a group of old gods or ghosts out on a hunt, making a bunch of noise. I thought it’d be interesting to pare it with the Santa sleigh myth. You can read more about this piece of folklore here. This story is part of my now annual tradition of posting creepy Christmas flash fiction in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Next Sunday will be the last one, but you can find the ones from this and last year here and my other not Christmas themed stories here. Follow this blog or my twitter for updates!
Merry Christmas
~
