Loch Ness

by Nancy Stohlman

After the rapture, the people voted to drain Loch Ness—the infamous lake in the Scottish Highlands that may or may not have contained a monster—and find out the goddamn truth once and for all.

The draining began on a Saturday. The water was channeled through makeshift valves and diverted north for 16 miles, all the way to the sea along carefully built irrigation ditches. By Saturday night the people were getting impatient; the lake emptied so slowly, like a clogged bathtub. But as the water table lowered over subsequent days, travelers arrived from all over Scotland, then the greater UK, and then from all over Europe to wait on the lakeshore edges, excited by every rock suddenly exposed. But the rocks always proved to be just rocks, and somehow the people already knew what was coming. They continued anyway. People came from all over the world to witness this slow draining of imagination, the small water of faith shrinking day after day until it become impossible to deny that the bottom of Loch Ness was covered with rocks and shells and abandoned furniture and clumps of waterlogged trash, and the people knew it was too late to put all the water back and pretend they hadn’t seen the bottom, because even if the water returned the monster would not.

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Buy the anthology here:

Join us in Bristol in 2019 for the 3rd Flash Fiction Festival!

Sixty micro fictions written by participants and presenters inspired by the second UK Flash Fiction Festival held in Bristol, July 2018. The stories here, by writers from several different countries, touch on world politics, relationships in all their forms, fantasy and historical themes. Short-short fictions that surprise and linger long.

The Awakening
By Nancy Stohlman

Excerpt:

“After the Rapture, the people were waking up, but I’m not sure what that meant, and I’m not even sure they knew what it meant, and I never trusted anyone who claimed to have woken up. My friend claimed to have woken up a few months ago, but she still seemed like a bitch to me. And, even at Starbucks, they would stare at you, and if you weren’t awake they wouldn’t draw a heart in your latte foam.”

Read the whole story at Digging through the Fat

Nancy Stohlman on the Biggest Mistake Writers Make

In the 37th in a series of posts from authors of 2018 books entered for The Story Prize, Nancy Stohlman, author of Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities (Big Table Publishing), lays out the stages of writing.

It’s not what you think.

The biggest mistake writers make? Not knowing which stage of the writing process they’re in.

We confuse writing with editing, we confuse editing with publication, we show work to others before it’s ready, we hoard work that is ready, afraid of rejection. Realizing which stage of the process you’re in—and more importantly what your work needs at that phase—is crucial.