Popular cat names - Wikipedia
There's some info on historic cat names here, Diane: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular...
17.02.2026 13:48
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a cat wearing glasses and a bow tie is laying on a laptop computer .
ALT: a cat wearing glasses and a bow tie is laying on a laptop computer .
Still need inspiration for our micro comp or anthology? Why not read Diane’s interviews with our editors & judges? If you scroll down in the link, you can read all five interviews. Subs are open till 23:59 GMT on Sunday 15th Feb.
www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/index.php/ne...
12.02.2026 12:46
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Love these drawings Lorraine. Hope you and Karen are well.
31.01.2026 12:22
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Really enjoyed this flash, and the way the character's story is told is very well crafted.
10.01.2026 15:19
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In the first of this season’s interviews, NFFD’s Diane Simmons talks to anthology editor Sharon Telfer @sharontelfer.bsky.social about writing from the heart, taking risks & much more: www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/index.php/ne...
17.12.2025 08:33
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Yes please, and what a beautiful cover!
13.12.2025 11:50
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We are very excited to reveal our guest editor & theme for our 2026 anthology! Submissions open on 1 Dec & close on 15 Feb 2026. Our microfiction comp judges will be announced next week! www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/index.php/an...
14.11.2025 14:16
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Congratulations Emily Rinkema! www.bathflashfictionaward.com/2025/10/2nd-...
31.10.2025 12:30
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Congratulations!
30.10.2025 14:55
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Congratulations to all on the lists!
30.10.2025 14:55
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You're welcome, Jim.
15.06.2025 10:33
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😆
15.06.2025 10:31
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I appreciated the whole story, Audrey, its fantastic.And it was the directness and authenticity of the first line, immediately putting me amongst women from a certain location, that made me laugh out loud. Funny and fresh!
15.06.2025 10:29
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Really like the humour and characterisation, via great, realistic dialogue, in this story by Jim Parisi.
#nffd2025
14.06.2025 23:16
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'In the last weeks before my mother died, a fox began appearing on our front porch. Always at twilight. Always facing the door.'
This is such a beautiful piece!
#nffd2025
14.06.2025 18:18
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'When the bomb rolled out of Rennie’s mouth and smashed down onto the dinner table, there was just time enough for you to marvel at how something as tiny and weightless as a single word could land with such impact...'
Love this flash by Barbara Diggs, and what an ending!
14.06.2025 16:47
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'You sit crisscross in the weeds, watching me push stone buttons and turn twig dials. At first glance, you’re still folding knots into clover stems. Only when I scrunch my eyes shut and sift through a subsequent plane of existence does your fate unfold.'
Great flash by Bethany Cutkomp.
#nffd2025
14.06.2025 16:20
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'Almond Skin' by Nina Miller
Amma told me not to eat almonds whole lest my skin got browner. She blanched them perfectly so that the white oval nut popped easily from its brown skin to be tossed away as she slivered the innards for cooking. Thankfully, she didn’t know I rubbed in tanning oil, whose bottles were as dark as I hoped to become. Didn’t know I soaked in the New England summer sun like my friends, showing skin that was supposed to be covered. Poolside, girls compared tans, and I was told how lucky I was that I didn’t burn. Yet I secretly envied the joy of peeling off sunburned skin and the warmth that emanated from their bright red skin all slathered with aloe. My aunt, visiting from India, wondered why we tried so hard to get dark when they advertised lightening creams there. India, a country I imagined, kept girls so sheltered that their skin blanched ghostly white. Here, I worked hard to forget my roots, though my skin became darker daily, an inheritance skin deep. A child of the Americas whose cultural identity teetered on the balance beam of Marvel Comics and Amar Chitra Katha. Never understanding who people wanted me to be. Never knowing the real me and not sure who I was becoming. Hiding that I was white underneath all my brown only to be continually exposed, bisected, transected, chopped to pieces like that sliver of almond perched precariously atop my Amma’s carrot halwa.
---
Nina Miller is an Indian-American physician, epee fencer, and creative. She loves writing competitions and nursing cups of chai. Wigleaf Top 50 for 2024. She is a contributor for The Pride Roars blog and author for Sci-Fi Shorts. Find her @NinaMD1 or ninamiller.bsky.social. Read more at ninamillerwrites.com.
FlashFlood: 'Almond Skin' by Nina Miller #nffd2025
14.06.2025 15:13
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'Martha's New Boyfriend' by Allan Miller
Edith tentatively shook his metallic claw, then led her guests into the living room. After some polite chit-chat, she asked her daughter if she would give her a hand in the kitchen. Martha could tell something was up. She’d been worried her parents might judge him on his looks, or the way he spoke, or because O.S.C.A.R 9 was an H-class titanium battle-bot.
Edith said she wasn’t being robotist, she just didn’t want to see her daughter getting hurt. Martha assured her the slaughter droid wouldn’t hurt a fly. Not unless it was a giant mecha-fly armed with photon blasters and spinning tail spikes.
A look of panic spread across their faces. They had to get O.S.C.A.R 9 as far away as possible, but the buzzing of approaching insectoid wings told them it was too late.
Edith clung to the vague hope that her husband might somehow bond with their daughter’s new partner, but then she heard his attack sirens booming. O.S.C.A.R 9 warned Mr Coulson to disengage his weapons systems or prepare to be obliterated. When the flyborg opened fire, he responded with both laser canons.
Mother and daughter stood in the back garden while proton screams filled the air. As the house was reduced to rubble, Martha vowed that next time she brought a killer robot home she’d make sure her father hadn’t been drinking.
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Allan Miller is a writer of humorous flash fiction. His work has been published in such places as Gutter, Popshot Quarterly, Ellipsis Zine, Full House Literary, Firewords, Porridge, Mono, ForgeZine, The Martello, Neither Fish Nor Foul and Trash Cat Lit, and featured on the shortlist for the Welkin Mini 2025.
FlashFlood: 'Martha's New Boyfriend' by Allan Miller #nffd2025
14.06.2025 14:46
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Debut Flash: 'Rotation' by Bailey Scroggins
A soft hum of an approaching train vibrated the wooden step I sat on. Its back, silver from the moon, was barely visible beyond the wall of my hillside parapet. A rhythmic hymn echoed, click-clank, click-clank, as each wheel passed over the seams on the track, rolling over the faint gaps, circling, as my spoon circled the inner rim of the stock pot, blending the seasonings into the broth, as my mother had, as did my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. I remember my mom recounting how her grandmother taught her to make soup, a simple base modified for whichever ailment was in need of a cure, the same one she taught me. She watched her grandmother sauté the onions in butter at the bottom of the pan, my mother atop a stool with built-in steps, one her grandfather had made so she could help stir in the ingredients. Or was this something I read as I cleaned out my mother’s house, a memory transcribed in a journal, a recital? It was all beginning to blur together; a rotation of wheels spinning, of pots stirred, of meals made, of living, left, and gone, rounding back to a glimpse of an impression I thought I once had.
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Bailey Scroggins leads an itinerant life. In and between each place, she writes. She and her husband consider Hudson, NY home base.
FlashFlood: Debut Flash: 'Rotation' by Bailey Scroggins #nffd2025
14.06.2025 13:33
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Great story by Cathy de Buitleir, which this registered nurse really appreciates!
#nffd2025
14.06.2025 14:06
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'In the grand scheme of things we are sitting on a giant sphere of ice swirling in space, cold steam flowing off, speed slowing by degrees.'
Wow! What a great thought-inducing flash by @sharonboyle
14.06.2025 13:37
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This is great, Jack. Love that ending.
14.06.2025 13:08
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'The sun rises. A fern uncurls. A spider crawls across the coffin lid. I am shadowed in cobwebs, shrouded in a mist of silver thread.'
Great new take on an old take, by @jackmmorris.bsky.social. Love that last paragraph.
#nffd2025
14.06.2025 13:07
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'Paul doesn’t kiss me. I want to pause, watch the octopus parkour across its tank – shrinking into the smallest corner, then exploding across the glass in a tangle of limbs – but something marble in Paul stops me.'
Great flash here by @fionamckay.bsky.social
#nffd2025
14.06.2025 12:44
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