First, here’s the prompts for the May 2023 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Then my usual long-winded explanation:

A Lovecraftian Horror Story

Involving a Broken Walkman

Set at an Assembly Line

Now, on to the details.

Hi! I’m Mike Mayak, I also write as Jeff Baker and I’m the current moderator for the monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, which was started by ‘Nathan Burgoine a few years ago and carried on by Cait Gordon and Jeffrey Ricker. It’s a monthly writing challenge mainly for stress-free fun that anyone can play.

Here’s how it works: the first Monday of every month I draw three cards; a heart, a diamond and a club. These correspond to a list naming a genre, a setting and an object that must appear in the story. Participants write up a flash fiction story, 1,000 words or less, post it to their website and link it here in the comments. I’ll post the results (and hopefully have one of my own written!) the week of May 15th, 2023.

As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage and the results were the Six of Hearts (Lovecraftian Horror), the Ten of Diamonds (An Assembly Line) and the Nine of Clubs (A Broken Walkman.)

So we will write a Lovecraftian Horror Story (that is, horror fiction derived from the kind of stuff H. P. Lovecraft wrote) set at an Assembly Line involving a Broken Walkman (if you remember those!)

So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week!

Thanks for playing, and I’ll see you next week!

And have fun!

——mike