#Flash Fiction: The Art of Storytelling in Under 1000 words

[paranatellonta]

A warm welcome to everyone who's discovering Paranatellonta after Worldcon 2024 in Glasgow, and to everyone who's been here for a long time and may be rediscovering this project now!

For a quick introduction, we are Fie and Minerva. Fie's photos have been inspiring Minerva's 10-sentence stories since August 2013. We were initially inspired to pick up this concept because we were admiring Erin Morgenstern and Carey Farrell's Flax-golden Tales.

The main page will lead you to the newest stories, the chronological page will show you where we started in 2013, and the random button will let the fates decide to which of our 380+ stories you'll be led. We cannot promise that all of them are equally amazing, but we do promise a new edition on every 1st and 15th day of the month. (Up until October 2017, we had one every week!) All of those editions can be accessed here for free.

(Of course we do ask you to mention our names and link to the original if you are telling your friends about this, and none of these materials can be used for generative AI learning or financial gain.)

Minerva was on the Worldcon 2024 panel "Flash Fiction: The Art of Storytelling in Under 1,000 Words", moderated by Stephen Granade, with Aimee Ogden, Istvan Vizvary, and @microsff as fellow panellists. The panel talked a little about experimental forms, so among the most recent Paranatellonta stories Minerva would recommend Edition 372 (Extract from "A Travel Guide to the Fairy Realm"), Edition 366 (story in poem format), and Edition 364 (dialogue) as examples of that. As our photographer has a cat, there are also quite a few cat pov stories to be found!

For those who want to find the flash piece Minerva recommended at the end of the panel, that was @avakellyfiction's claustrophobic love story "Silence, Entwined" from queer horror anthology Neon Horror.

Ava Kelly was also the guest photographer and writer for Paranatellonta's fifth and tenth anniversary. They are the author of the beautiful book Alia Terra: Stories from the Dragon Realm, illustrated by @mspencerdraws.

In case you're curious about reading longer work by Minerva, xyr queer fairy tale novella The Dragon of Ynys came out with Atthis Arts in 2020, and xyr website is the place to keep an eye on for news.

Among the flash fiction pieces recommended by the other panellists were The God of Arepo (Tumblr, 2018), The Night the River Meets the Sky (Fireside Fiction, 2022), and Good (Flash Fiction Online). An additional recommendation from the audience was Litany in the Heart of Exorcism (Flash Fiction Online).

We also recommend Small Wonders magazine, co-edited by Stephen Granade, for more SFF flash fiction and poetry.

Enjoy all these flashes of imagination! We hope you, too, will be inspired. Thank you for being here!