Tag: Milk Candy Review

  • Flash Fiction Review – “What Kira Packed” by Heather Bell Adams

    (The flash fiction story “What Kira Packed” by Heather Bell Adams was first presented by Milk Candy Review on December 11th, 2025.)

    (Image from Milk Candy Review)

    You know what “writing advice” I hate getting more than anything? “Less is more.” And the hair’s breadth of a runner up to that infuriating maxim is, “Show don’t tell.” These two bits of advice are the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of the writing world, who get marched out by lazy editors and inept writing instructors when they need to say something enigmatic yet mildly profound, which can be interpretation in any way, other than with a coherent explanation. Those two phrases have been used so often, that the words have been rendered meaningless.

    But then Heather Bell Adams writes “What Kira Packed,” and finally, there is an articulate, rational, and svelte work of flash that says in a clear voice – this is how you write less without telling.

    This piece is under three hundred words, using a structure devise of what Kira packed going to and then back from “camp.” It is heartbreaking in its simplicity, knowing the “change” Kira endured at “camp” and how what she’ll be coming home with what may include trauma, repression, self-loathing, and depression. This is a gut-punch of a piece, a brutalist’s honesty here, but Heather Bell Adams also leaves just enough vague, forcing us to use our imaginations to fill in what is left undefined. This creates a unique and individual horror for each of us as to what “really” happened at this camp.

    This is how you do it, and do it impactfully, with intent to get to the marrow of a story.

    Bravo.

  • Short Story Review: “Something Out of a Horror Movie” by Mario Aliberto III

    (The short story “Something Out of a Horror Movie,” by Mario Aliberto III appeared on February 27th, 2025 in Milk Candy Review.)

    (Image from Milk Candy Review)

    When I was a teenager, and well into my twenties and beyond, I spent hours debating with my friends about the mechanics, tropes, and clichés of horror movies. How most horror movies, more than any other genre of film, are made up of an uncountable number of rip offs and copies of more successful horror movies. For myself, as a person who loves awful movies, bad horror films are an entertaining gift that just keeps on giving.

    So, when I started reading Mario Aliberto III’s “Something Out of a Horror Movie,” I was intrigued as to what he was wanting to accomplish is this flash fiction story. It reads like it was written but someone who loves the awful character clichés of the genre. What I appreciated in this piece was that as I started reading it, I couldn’t put my finger on if this is a story about characters in a horror movie, or if they are characters in “real life” that find themselves in a horror movie situation, or if these are characters that have seen too many horror movies and went to that places because of the situation they were in. By doing that, structuring the story that way, left me feeling off balance which played very well to the theme of the piece, and ultimately the climax of the story.

    But what I enjoyed most was that this story took a stock clichéd character that I have seen in millions of horror movies, and made me think of her differently, and also made me view her actions in a fully well-rounded way for that character. Aliberto does this rather effortlessly, and compactly. The last paragraph is just great.

    I will never look at the Bad Girl trope character the same way again.

  • Short Story Review – “Good Girls” by Martha Keller

    (The flash fiction story “Good Girls” by Martha Keller was first published in Milk Candy Review on September 19th, 2024.)

    One of the many things that I love about flash fiction, as a form of storytelling, is that it lends itself quite well to writers willing to play with the structure and the form that a narrative can take. Martha Keller accomplishes this deconstruction of a traditional narrative, rather well in her piece “Good Girls,” which appeared in Milk Candy Review back in September of 2024.

    After an opening paragraph, which describes the immortal clashes between girls on swings and boys who wish to remove them, the story takes on a narrative structure of examining consequential moments of life, every five years. What Keller uniquely creates is not a linear progression, but more like a retrograde motion, starting at the age of 30, and descending to a newborn. This format enables the reader to compare the desires and aspirations of each age, but highlighting specifically how what is important at a certain age, wasn’t even on the horizon just five years before. In considering this structure, it plays with a level of menace that seems just below the surface in each of these ages. How in each age, something is sought and even acquired, but the feeling of it being taken away is also present, which goes back to the opening paragraph of the girls on the swings and the boys wanting to take that from them.

    “Good Girls” is very efficient and succinct as a flash piece; only 400+ words. Keller doesn’t waste any time in this story. This directness coupled with the unique structure of its narrative creates an insightful work of flash fiction.

  • Short Story Review: “Why I didn’t Immediately Load the Car When My Husband Texted that the Fire Was Getting Closer” by Claudia Monpere

    (The flash piece “Why I didn’t Immediately Load the Car When My Husband Texted that the Fire Was Getting Closer” by Claudia Monpere, appeared in Milk Candy Review.)

    I like flash fiction; it is my preferred form of storytelling now. It’s a very malleable form as well. It can be a straight forward very short short story, it can boarder right up to poetry, a snapshot of stream of consciousness – whatever it needs to be to tell a story, or complete a thought, or action – flash fiction can do it.

    In Claudia Monpere’s “Why I didn’t Immediately Load the Car When My Husband Texted that the Fire Was Getting Closer,” we are presented with an impressively short flash piece (193 words) that consists of 10 sentences. The title also functions as an essential setup, as the body of the piece is answering that question. A device is employed with 9 of the sentences beginning with the word “Because,” except for the last one. Though this is not the most original device, Monpere uses it effectively to create a rhythm and a pace that builds to the concluding final sentence. Also, the third, sixth, and eighth sentences are about the impending fire, creating a dramatic effect, like a ticking clock, adding to the tension of this moment. “Why didn’t I…” is a good example of why the flash fiction form is so intriguing when it comes to telling stories and expressing feelings and thoughts.

    As a person who also had to load a car quickly as a wildfire approached my home, I deeply identified with this piece. When a natural disaster is an abstract, and just a mental exercise, you think you know how you’ll react, and prioritize what is important when that moment arrives. But when you open your front door and can smell the fire, see the sky changing color, and hear the fire trucks, you don’t know what to do at first, and I grasped for the things I thought were important, before I realized what was important. And maybe I am biased due to my personal experience, but Claudia Monpere captured an emotional truth in the middle of a disaster perfectly.

  • Goodnight Springton! There Will Be No Reviews!

    Yeah, I tried my best, but this week just had it out for me.

    There will be no reviews this week.

    Which is annoying as I had several pieces in the hopper that I just haven’t read yet.

    Such as:

    When She Falls by Louise McGuinness, from Milk Candy Review

    Mr. Mollusk by Didi Wood, from Okay Donkey

    An Excerpt from “Howling Women” (Shelby Hinte), from Rejection Letters

    BOZO by Souvankham Thammavongsa, from The New Yorker

    Hopefully, I will get them read, and feel free to check them out yourself.

    If it helps, here’s a picture of my dog back from the groomers, contemplating if free will is an illusion.