Notes from An Alien

~ Explorations In Reading, Writing & Publishing ~

Tag Archives: Johnpaul Mahofski

Flash Fiction Is Alive and Well


How long is a novel? Brevity-Flash Fiction

Some say at least 50,000 words; but, there are well-accepted novels that are shorter.

How long is a novella?

Longer than a short story but shorter than a novel.

How long is a short story?

Somewhere from about 1,500 words to upwards of (some say) 30,000 words.

So, somewhere under 1,500 words is “Flash” (though, some folks say under 2,000…).

One definition goes like this:

“Flash fiction is an umbrella term used to describe any fictional work of extreme brevity, including the Six-Word Story, 140-character stories, also known as twitterature, the dribble (50 words), the drabble (100 words), and sudden fiction (750 words).”

And, the article on The Review Review is worth reading for an introduction to Flash…

But, I must add the sub-category of Microfiction (sometimes said to be 300 words or less) because of these past posts on this blog:

Breaking Boundaries ~ Microfiction — which has some fine examples of the craft…

Microfiction ~ Revisited — with more fine examples…

MicroFiction Reprise :-)

My Friend ~ Micro-Fiction Writer & Prison Librarian

Author Interview ~ Johnpaul Mahofski — Interview with the Friend of the last post…

Wikipedia lists a number of authors who wrote Flash Fiction

I’ll also share an interview—The State of Flash Fiction—with the author of the book in the image up there (which can be ordered by clicking on the image…).

Then, I should mention that my recent writing endeavor, Story Bazaar, includes many pieces that fall into the category of Flash Fiction (with just a few Micros)
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MicroFiction Reprise :-)


Our Internet Age has spawned what appears to be an appetite that’s appeased in bits and bites rather than in full-course meals.

It’s even become a form of writing, whether in blogs, news, or fiction.

The Paris Review had a clutch of excerpts from Lou Beach’s forthcoming book, 420 Characters : Stories.

The book’s description: “Miniature short stories written as Facebook updates, when there was a 420-character limit, spaces and punctuation included.”

Lou Beach’s Site quotes Kirkus Reviews: “Celebrated illustrator Beach…turns his uncommon sensibilities to the written word, composing a small fortune in vignettes that originally appeared as Facebook updates. An adroit experiment that marries linguistic restraint to literary cool.

I was alerted to this new release by a good friend of mine on Book Island in the virtual world, Second life.

His name is Brokali now. As often happens, since Second Life is a virtual world, folks will re-create themselves, changing their names along with their appearance.

Brokali’s name in Real Life is Johnpaul Mahofski and, when he still had the name Relish (in Second Life), I did two posts about his MicroFiction which included 10 of his superb stories.

Johnpaul is a librarian at the Eastern Correctional Institution in the State of Maryland in the U.S. A.

He’s written a huge number of Facebook Fiction stories (as well as other lengths) in the new Literary Realm

Do, please, check out our sampling of Johnpaul’s masterful fiction in these two posts:

Breaking Boundaries ~ Microfiction

Microfiction ~ Revisited

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“Almost” “Reviews” . . .


How short can something be before the “experts” say it’s not a review?

My dictionary gives a first definition as: “A new appraisal or evaluation”.

There is a special page on this blog used for “normal” Reviews of my books.

This post will give three very short “reviews”… and, I’ll add this post to the Review Page :-)

The first “review” arrived as an incident related to me by a prison librarian.

Johnpaul Mahofski placed my book, Notes from An Alien, in his library at the Eastern Correctional Institution in Maryland.

Someone checked it out then, a couple months later, someone else checked it in.

It was in bad shape, the pages and cover wrinkled so badly that Johnpaul decided he had to replace it.

My book had suffered the same treatment that books of the inmates’ most popular genre, Urban Fiction, had suffered—being passed around so much they began to fall apart

The second almost-review happened today.

Once a book is released and promoted on the Web, an author is well-served by having a Google alert set up to see everything being said and done about the book.

Without my interacting with Tamela Quijas, she created a post with images and links to my book, saying: “I’ve fallen head first  into the world of Sci-Fi.  I’ve absolutely LOVED the novels that have passed my desk…The latest Sci-Fi thriller on my reading list is Notes from An Alien…”

Tamela doesn’t give any of her own opinions about my book but the layout of the post is “A new appraisal or evaluation”.

The last review is still short but much sweeter.

My long-time, never-met-in-person friend Catherine Roberts had received a free copy of Notes from an Alien but was struggling with the language, not being a fluent English reader.

She went ahead and purchased the book and sent me this charming email:

“Yesterday I received your book in the mail, I already read most of it last night and today, I was already a bit familiar with it, since you sent me the whole script over the internet, but I find it much more interesting to read from the book …truely exceptionel good writing a bit complex in a few areas for me that is a norm since I never studied true difficult words in english, I look them up…also I think I reconize quite a few of the people that are mentioned in fictiouse names. I love the book Alex, and you are a absolutely great writer as far as I may state.”

No writer could ask for anything more………
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