Over the summer I was asked if one of my stories could feature in a US online fiction writing course for high school students, and to cut a long story short I said yes.


Yesterday I saw the part of the course that contained my story, and that made me happy for a number of reasons. I liked that it was under the ‘advanced fiction’ banner (I’ve never been called advanced before) and I also liked that it was in the section that dealt with ‘going beyond the rules’.

But the best bit was that my work’s mentioned in the same sentence as Dave Eggers. Yes. Mr McSweeney’s and Pullitzer Prize Finalist.

Here’s a little quote:

“Another unspoken rule that is generally followed by writers is to avoid writing in the second person point of view.

Flash fiction allows writers to experiment with this point of view because, in a story so short, readers are a little more willing to accept things that would be more difficult to accept if they were spending a long time with them. Read either Seconds Are Ticking By by Nik Perring or Accident by Dave Eggers’.”


Which made me very happy indeed. I just hope my story’s useful.