Featuring stories under 1000 words, Flash Frog says they like their stories like they like their dart frogs: “small, brightly colored, and deadly to the touch.” Publishing a new story every Monday, recent contributors include Maria Poulatha, Courtney Clute, Sage Tyrtle, and Dri Chiu Tattersfield, with artwork by MarieJulie Lafrance and Rob Kaniuk. Submissions are on a rolling basis, with July being reserved for “ghost story submissions only.”
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
128 words. That’s what Cathy Ulrich gives us in “I Do Not Want to Live Without You.” Just 128 words. And somehow that’s exactly enough.
We’re introduced to characters in a motel and the motel’s swimming pool, a quick snapshot but a vivid one. The narrator says, “maybe later there will be consequences and police cars, maybe later it will be like our parents said,” and this is the perfect amount of information to allow readers to put together a backstory for this snapshot.
Is it the backstory Ulrich imagined when writing this piece of flash? Is the backstory you assign it the same as mine? Maybe or maybe not. And that’s what I love about it. There’s beauty in the language used and beauty in what’s kept from us.
“I Do Not Want to Live Without You” by Cathy Ulrich. Flash Frog, June 2021.
Online literary magazine Flash Frog delivers up one story under 1,000 words weekly with an accompanying original artwork created just for that piece.
Founded just this year, their focus is on “language that jumps off the page” and “stories that linger for days” as they like their stories as they like dart frogs: small, brightly colored, and deadly to the touch.
Recent stories include “And This is How You Fade Away” by Tyrel Klessinger; Shannon Layne’s “All the Ways We Tried to Kill My Father”; and “Man on the Moon” by Patricia Q. Bidar.
They are open to submissions year-round and do not charge a submission fee. Hop on over to their listing on NewPages to learn more.