Little Fiction Top Tens.

We’re wrapping up the year the only way we know how.

With lists.
From some of our favourite writers, editors, shopkeepers, and thing makers.

Specifically:
Leesa Cross-Smith’s Top Ten Favorite Things I Watched on Netflix This Year.

Danny Goodman’s Top Ten Reads of 2012, or Why My Cat Eats Bookmarks.

Jeremy Hanson-Finger’s Ten Amazing 1950s Cop Slang Phrases I Learned from James Ellroy Crime Novels in 2012.

Amanda Leduc’s and Allegra Young’s Ten Best Places To Bare It For Books. 

Sarah Flynn’s Ten Favorite Lyrics of the Year. (with a playlist)

Will Johnson’s Top 10 Short Stories by Canadian Authors.

Andrew F. Sullivan’s Top Ten Books I Read This Year.

The Intergalactic Travel Authority’s Top 10 Questions Asked in the Intergalactic Travel Authority.

Jess Taylor’sTop Ten Launch Parties and Literary Events of 2012.

and Troy Palmer’s Ten (+1) Things That 2012 Would Not Have Been as Awesome Without.

Check it out.

Cheers. And Happy Holidays.

Why we heart Xe Sands.

If you know (or know of) Xe Sands, you know she’s all kinds of amazing. Not just a wickedly talented narrator, but one who has no problem lending her craft to stories she’s loves. Just because she loves them.

A few months back, Xe lent her voice to a Little Fiction title, Sarah Flynn’s Little Birds. It’s a story in three parts and Xe recorded one of them called How The Light Gets In.

It was the first time a Little Fiction title had been put into an audio format. And we were pretty honoured, to say the least.

Then Xe went on to record the other two parts of Little Birds — The Brambles and (most recently, as in today) Little Birds.

In between, she also read another one of our stories, To Those Who Cut Us Down — the raw and powerful telling of a very public double suicide by Emily Walker.

We’re going to get around to housing all of Xe’s Little Fiction reads on our site (including an upcoming project for our recent flash compilation), but in the meantime, here they are for your listening pleasure.

Little Birds:
The Brambles
How The Light Gets In
Little Birds

To Those Who Cut Us Down

 Grab your headphones and go.

May was awesome.

And here’s why.

It was our first time experiencing short story month, which was a great way to promote our stuff. And, thanks to folks like Thomas Michael Duncan and many others, we discovered a bunch of great short stories as well.

We also saw a bunch of new followers, on here, on Twitter and on Facebook. And, to date, May was our busiest month on the site.

Speaking of the site—and another first for us—we published four short stories in May: Little Birds by the sensational Sarah Flynn, A Few Loose Ends by the magnificent M.W. Fowler, Soul Gazing by the priceless Pete Grapentien, and Swarm Theory by the brilliant Braydon Beaulieu. If you them read, a million thanks. If not, you can grab your free downloads here.

Soon after debuting the stories, a section of Little Birds (How the Light Gets In) was given a beautiful narration by the extremely talented voice artist Xe Sands. 

And at the beginning of the month, we also announced our next compilation: Little (flash) Fiction. So far, we’ve been receiving way more submissions than we anticipated, and there’s still a month to go. 

Lastly—certainly not least—May saw another first for us: we handed the reigns over to two-time Little Fiction author Will Johnson for an interview with Jay Hosking, writer of another Little Fiction title, Analogue. 

Hence, the awesomeness of May.

Stay tuned for our next stories, coming to the site June 6: Extensions by Carissa Halston, and To Those Who Cut Us Down by Emily Walker. You can check out the cover art for both of those titles here. And we’ll have another interview by Will, this time with Calm, Ghosts author Meredith Hambrock.

Thanks.

Little Birds.

“Someday, someone is going to knock all of the wildness out of you” 

And so begins Little Birds, a story in three parts by the always charismatic Sarah Flynn.

In “Brambles,” we read about a young woman whose wildness consumes her. In “How the Light Gets In,” we wake up in the wild, not knowing how we got there, but knowing that there is a place we need to be getting to. And in the final story — the title story — we learn of those who fly away from us, and those who can’t.

Little Birds is equal parts charming and heartbreaking. We hope you like it as much as we do.

You can download Little Birds for free at Little Fiction, or follow any of these links to read it on your smartphone, tablet, eReader or desktop.

Little Fiction is about to turn six months old, and we’ll be celebrating next week with the release of four short stories (instead of our usual two):

Little Birds by Sarah Flynn, Swarm Theory by Braydon Beaulieu, Soul Gazing by Pete Grapentien and A Few Loose Ends by M.W. Fowler. Until then, hope you dig the covers. 

Thanks.