Flash fiction and short stories have always been a passion of mine since I discovered that I could put them free to read on the Internet way back in the 1990s and that people actually seemed to enjoy reading them.

Many of my visitors seem to login for a good read during their coffee break which suits flash fiction stories that work out at about 750 words or less.

My short stories are rather longer at around 2000 words and probably need a lunch break.

In addition to my flash fictions and short stories, I have also written and posted some free online novels and novellas to my various web sites and blogs for people who prefer a longer read.

Over the years I have written many flash fictions and short stories and naturally some have been better than others but I have always attempted to achieve the highest quality rather than quantity.

By focusing on flash fiction writing, recently, perhaps it has made it easier to achieve both. I hope so. My most recent flash fiction stories can be found updated in the index of this site and I hope you enjoy them.

Your comments are always most welcome

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott – flash fiction and short stories writer)

There is a new free flash fiction and very short stories site aiming to provide the best and highest quality free short stories and free flash fiction to give everybody a really good read for Christmas.

Stories, so far, include:

1. The Human Kindness Virus – a virus short story flash fiction
2. Highland Beginning – new global warming and climate change short fiction
3. What’s so attractive about my rear end? A humorous article about well …
4. Ultimate Christmas Kiss Confession – an Xmas party flash fiction very short story
5. An affair? Are you thinking of having an affair? A flash fiction very short story

It’s growing fast and well worth checking out if you are looking for micro-fiction, very short stories, short short stories, sudden fiction or postcard fiction. Each micro-story or short short story is completely free to read on-line.

Bye for now

Rob

“I control you … You’re mine to do as I like. You move, you speak and it’s me that talks!”

Eyes wide, slate blue, black hair sleeked back, his face contorts in a snarl.

All around, the busy market place bustles with safe people, happy people, busy people.

A scruffy, yellow VW camper-van covered with hastily painted flowers roars by nearly catching his elbow.

He whirls around as it disappears into the traffic and yells. “Up yours!”

—————————————————————–

“I can’t understand why you watch all these TV soaps, dear,” I say.

“They’re harsh, violent and just plain unpleasant.”

Slowly. I climb upstairs to my study, turn on my computer and start to write … Gradually, I feel serene and happy again.

The End

Copyright Rob Hopcott 2007. All characters in this and other flash fiction or very short stories on this site are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.

According to a Channel 4 UK television documentary last week, global warming may have more to do with sun spots than human generated carbon emissions. If this is true, global warming may be a slower phenomenon than currently believed, which is reassuring, but also one which we can do nothing about, which is much more scary.

The point was made that planet Earth has gone through proven cycles when temperatures ranged widely across the globe. The North and South poles have been melted long before the internal combustion engine was even a twinkle in the eye of homo sapiens. Ice ages have come and gone with no intervention from human beings and there is no reason to believe that this will not happen in the future. More on astronomy article

Cheriton Fitzpaine rocked to the sounds of the Crediton Folk Festival last weekend (16th to 18th March 2007) with hoodening plays, belly dancers, Morris dancers, singing and playing sessions, concerts,  and lots more.

Situated between Crediton and Tiverton,  Cheriton Fitzpaine is a beautiful rural Devon village with residents who were really friendly and welcoming to the folkies.

Rob’s old camper van rocked too on it’s first weekend out, due to the high winds, but passed all tests with flying colours.

Respect to the tent campers who were under canvass despite the cold and still came out smiling.

Finally, well done to Pete and John for running a great early spring festival.

Read more about this early spring folk festival

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott – online author and camper van newbie)

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott – online author and spring rocker )

When the editor of an online UK West Country magazine suggested we have regular informal lunch time meetings, I readily agreed.  Working by one’s self, even in a beautiful rural location, can lead to forgetting the art of conversation and I readily leaped at the chance to gossip about fascinating topics such as key words, search engines and web design which the rest of the people I meet strangely seem to regard as monumentally boring!

But where to hold our regular meetings in UK’s idyllic West Country? Read about how we decided walking and talking best satisfied our rural meeting needs.

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott – online author)

 My New Year’s online story writing resolution is to use my new camper van. as mobile office for working and lunchtime walking in as many new West Country UK rural locations as I can find.

Hopefully, working from my camper van in different daily rural locations each day will also enable me to explore many beautiful new rural lunch time walks and I intend to record these in my new walks weblog

Read all about my first day story and article writing in my motorhome parked in the beautiful West Country UK .

If anybody knows of great (free and legal) locations to park up for the day to write, enjoy the scenery and a walk at lunchtime in the West Country UK, I would love to hear about them

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott – online author)

Wednesday 17th January is the traditional Wassail night at the Butchers Arms in Carhampton, West Somerset, UK and I shall be there to play some folk tunes in the bar with (hopefully) a load of other traditional folk musicians, but why have people been doing these strange things for so many years?

Read more about Wassailing in West Somerset, UK

The holy grail for us authors is finding new sources of readers for their stories.

I’ve been wanting to check out pod-casting for a while as it seems to be growing in popularity everywhere. The wonderful news is that it seems to be relatively easy to implement.

My first effort was to pod cast my Christmas short story for 2006 entitled Three Christmas lovers.

My second (with some improvements) is a humorous office story called Seductive Living Icon.

Hope you like them.

Bye for now

Rob