365 Lies by Die Booth is a collection of flash fiction that was put together after a resolution made to write one piece a day in 2013. And what an awesome project this is!
Let’s dive in!
My Thoughts on 365 Lies by Die Booth
I love flash fiction! From the drabbles from KJK Publishing to the wonderful flash fiction from Jeremy Ray, I couldn’t wait to turn the pages here to see what was to come.
The variety that Die has here is awesome. The story lengths vary from as little as just two words to a few pages! Kicking us off, the very first flash fiction piece definitely had me wondering what the authors New Years Eve had been like!
Some tales are perfect in little snapshots, leaving readers totally satisfied. Some will make readers crave more! But the trip reading these tales set me on, phew! There was anxiety, sadness, longing, laughter, fear, dread, and so much more.
Smoke break is one of the many that got me fired up! I think about the unfairness of this all the time. Then stories like Hindsight had me chuckling. Then there were stories with lines like this that left me totally chilled: “And when you woke up from a nightmare and the sheets were soaked in sweat, that wasn’t sweat, that was its spit from where it’d been licking the fear from you, feeding off your fear.”
I especially loved all of the stories that made me go “wait, what?!” There were many of these that also varied in length! One that was like this, titled Scissors, was just three short sentences! Long-lost was another at just three short paragraphs! Then there was Crow Crag, that was a bit longer. Each of them had me a bit stunned at what I had just read.
Then there came the tale, May 19th – A past and future self. This one specifically hit me hard while reading. I’ve been working on rediscovering my past self and allowing her to let go of the things she clung to to survive… this story made me cry! Such a therapeutic one for me.
From this collection, I loved so many of the tales… so I tried to keep my list of top favorites short but wound up with 20 I wanted to highlight.
- January 4th – It’s only a thing
- January 25th – The reinforcements
- February 10th – Don’t be a hero
- March 1st – Lucile’s List
- March 7th – Frozen in time
- March 12th – Smoke break
- March 29th – Photograph (VI)
- April 13th – Banner ad
- April 15th – Scissors
- April 20th – Left behind
- May 7th – Watch
- May 19th – A past and future self
- May 30th – Generation
- July 1st – Horror
- August 7th – The creepy door
- August 12th – In the night time
- September 27th – Coffee time
- October 8th – The vendy
- October 24th – Hindsight
- November 9th – Find me at Hearteven Cross
So many of these could be revisited if Die ever so chose. If he did, I would like to put in a request for a larger story expanding on these seven titles:
- January 25th – The reinforcements
- February 10th – Don’t be a hero
- March 7th – Frozen in time
- May 7th – Watch
- July 3rd – Crow Crag
- August 7th – The creepy door
- September 3rd – A letter from penal colony EP2M-792
Needless to say, I loved this collection!
My Favorite Passages from 365 Lies
The air is full of dust. It hangs in a wet, tea-coloured fog like the belly of a storm cloud just before the burst.
It’s hard to feel bad about killing if you can’t even look your reflection in the eye. A curve of cheek delineated in smeared blood is all that is reflected above my coat collar in the glass exit door of an anonymous hotel. It’s almost as if I’m not there at all. If I could only see my own face again, see if all the years of butchery have altered me, then maybe I could stop.
I remember wondering if we could work it so that Bridget could come to our church one Sunday. Sort of a religious exchange programme. We felt like pirates. I’m still not sure what the game was, but it felt like we’d won.
And when you woke up from a nightmare and the sheets were soaked in sweat, that wasn’t sweat, that was its spit from where it’d been licking the fear from you, feeding off your fear.
We’re all living lifetimes of chasing the stars, even if we don’t realise it.
It became a joke, almost. The creepy door, that no amount of oil or hinge tinkering could ease the creak out of. It was as if it was trying to be eerie, in an almost sentient way.
Some things you don’t even notice until you miss them.
He seems just about to push her up against the wall, but she saves him the trouble by pushing him against the wall instead. His arterial spray makes the most delicate hissing noise as it paints the brickwork with a feather-fan.
My Final Thoughts on 365 Lies
This collection of flash fiction was so cool!
This book could be treated like an advent calendar for the full year if you wanted to discover each story in the related day, or if you just can’t help but devour great writings, you can read it in just a couple of days! Either way, this is an awesome collection that I highly recommend checking out.
If you do, please feel free to pop back here and let me know what your favorites were!
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I’ve never heard of flash fiction! I’ll have to check it out. These stories sound fascinating.
It’s so much fun! 🙂