{"product_id":"2940154411964","title":"My Take: on the Iron Writer Challenges 1 - 26","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen author Tannis Laidlaw read about a new weekly flash fiction contest consisting of four writers, using four ‘elements’ that had to be included in a 500 word story, written over just four days, she thought the idea amusing at first, but ultimately thought-provoking and challenging even though she was primarily a novelist and a scientific research writer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNevertheless, when she put her hat in the Iron ring, she became one of the first four contestants. She won that challenge with a dark twist on a well-known nursery rhyme. It takes pride of place as the first story (in this case, a verse) in this book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe also set herself another task. She won’t allow herself to make use of supernatural beings, fantasy, or magical realism when trying to incorporate the elements in any of the stories. No vampires, no made-up worlds and no secret powers – she says it felt a bit like cheating to do so. There’s plenty of magic in her stories: the magic of location (a hermit deep in the Canadian bush in A Clean and Tidy Life, or in deepest 19th century Africa in An African Safari; the magic of psychology (The Mayan Legend and Seventy in particular but psychology is in almost all her stories – she is a psychologist, after all – and the magic of stories for adults who used to be children (see Christmas Bedtime Story and The Nursery Rhyme). Sometimes not using fantasy is difficult given a few of the elements that had to be included, for instance, “a talking tree” in the first challenge. She solved that problem by having a talking tree in the imagination of a frightened little boy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf you like “flash fiction”, or “short shorts” or whatever you call one-page stories, read on. Here are twenty-six stories, twenty-six locations and many more than twenty-six unique characters.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tannis Laidlaw","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47074785198320,"sku":"2940154411964","price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940154411964_p0.jpg?v=1764111623","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940154411964","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}