November 30: Mike Donoghue

“So, if we win the lottery, we get to eat meat?” her son wistfully asked. “Well, no” she clutched their creased ticket “everyone else does.”

Mike @mpdonoghue mostly lives in his head, but resides in Vancouver.

November 27: Mike Donoghue

The bears were using the graveyard as a giant fridge, but he was using it as shooting gallery. Which worked well, until he ran out of ammo.

Mike @mpdonoghue mostly lives in his head, but resides in Vancouver.

November 25: Mike Donoghue

For my OCD they suggested a support group. Over the past five years, I’ve never missed a meeting. They think that’s success.

Mike @mpdonoghue mostly lives in his head, but resides in Vancouver.

Author Showcase: Michael Donoghue

Michael Donoghue’s @mpdonoghue twitter fiction has appeared in trapeze magazine and other twitter fiction sites. Some of his “longer” work can be found in Short, Fast and Deadly. He loves infomercials, people watching and daydreaming.

tm: What inspired you to start writing twitter fiction?

M: I stumbled upon Thaumatrope and my brain promptly exploded. Here were entire stories in a sentence or two. Some weren’t even proper sentences. Fragments! But in some of those fragments there was a whole experience. I was hooked.

Plus the kitchen tiles needed grouting and the deck resurfacing. When the question becomes “write or grout,” writing is always going to win.

tm: What drew you to the speculative genre?

M: Find nowhere on the map. Got it? So now, keep going. Are you there yet? Now, beyond THAT place, there’s where I grew up. When you’re a kid in the middle of oblivion, with miles to roam, the place you tend to travel most is inside your head. I don’t think that’s ever left me.

tm: Describe your writing process, how do you write a twitter story?

M: Hemmingway said that writing is easy, “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” He was wrong of course, but only because nobody uses a typewriter anymore. I’m no Hemmingway, but the process, for me and many others I suspect, is still the same.

You come up with in idea, maybe it’s a remark you overhear, something you’ve read, or an interaction you see, it really doesn’t matter how it comes to you.

Then translating that idea into 140 character story – difficult. Sometimes it gushes out, like rainwater out of a drainpipe and – bam – it’s done. Perfect.

But most often it’s like a scab that you just keeping picking at for a week before it you finally pull it off.

tm: What is the hardest thing about writing twitter fiction?

M: Rejection. Rejection. Rejection. “Why didn’t they like that story? It was the best story ever written. No it wasn’t, it was the worst. An abomination to the English language.” *hangs head in shame* “Pointless. Give up. I’ve got no talent whatsoever . . . Wait! What if I reverse the POV, rearrange these three words and…”

November 23: S. Kay

It was a great show, robots playing music from EEG of her seizures. Then she started new meds. Fans left for that Tourette’s sax player.

S. Kay is an unbalanced @blueberrio.

November 20: Stephen V. Ramey

A young man gazed into the night sky and beheld a luminous future. Years later he laments how much more darkness there was than light.

Stephen V. likes the night sky; he’s just saying… http://tinyurl.com/294vwnl

November 18: Stella Pierides

Watching the “String of Pearls” circling supernova 1987A got her pulse racing. The iron in her blood had been made by the stellar explosion.

Stella Pierides @stellapierides writes poetry and prose, and blogs about her work. http://www.stellapierides.com/blog.

November 16: Dennis Y. Ginoza

I tell the nurse that I’m not sick. “We know,” she coos, as she lays out the forceps, the scalpel, the bonesaw. “That’s why you’re here.”

Dennis Y. Ginoza @DennisYG is an MFA student at Pacific University. http://www.dennisyginoza.com

November 13: Andrew Gorman

Like the bobby pin holding her dress in place, she propped the easel against the thin wall of existence. To her surprise, something tugged.

Andrew Gorman @Commonfright writes in the quiet corners of New England.

November 11: Carma Lynn Park

clinging to my heels / darkness / in my own shape

Carma Lynn Park @carmapoet has been reading/writing science fiction and fantasy for (mumble, mumble) years.