Do you write short fiction but long to s-t-r-e-t-c-h those tight little 55ers, flash pieces, and short stories into longer, publishable work? Do you have binders full of short pieces with characters you’d love to flesh out? Are you dying to tell the rest of these stories? If so,The Short and Long of Itis for you! Award-winning short fiction writer Paul Alan Fahey shows you how to expand and adapt your brief creations into longer, more satisfying stories, plays, novellas, and novels pitch perfect for publication in the e-age. This book will help you practice expanding your short fiction. Through detailed examples and hands-on exercises, you’ll learn how to: Adapt 55 fiction into flash fiction;Adapt flash fiction into short stories and plays;Adapt flash memoir into personal essays;Write a tight logline;Develop a story theme;Build three-act structure; andDevelop characters and enhance backstory.So grab a copy today and start writing longer stories tomorrow!

The Short and Long of It

The wick snaps and sizzles. I imagine it sucking up the oxygen. I gasp for breath. My eyes burn and water, but I can’t turn away. Henry’s hand tightly in mine is a reassuring pressure, telling me to go along with Livie, that no harm will come to us, that we will soon be back to our normal routine. I almost laugh at the thought.


One thing for sure, I am the weakest link in our spiritual chain. It isn’t as if I was born into this crazy coven. My mother and father died twelve years ago in a tragedy that left me a shy and impressionable girl of eight, and the lone survivor of an automobile accident, one that obliterated my family as well as the earlier memories of childhood.


And so I went to live with my mother’s older sister, Aunt Livie, and her husband, Henry. There were two generations between us. I can’t remember when Henry wasn’t bald and thick around the middle, or Livie, silver-haired and matronly.


Chapter 47