Bonus Flash!Mob for June: CROSSING THE TRACKS
As part of the Crossing The Tees Book Festival, we're writing and publishing a fast little book of tiny stories within two weeks.
A bonus FLASH!MOB prompt for June 2025 is CROSSING THE TRACKS!
As part of the Crossing The Tees Book Festival, we're writing and publishing a fast little book of tiny stories within two weeks. And because it's the 200th anniversary of the Stockton to Darlington railway this year, the theme is trains, railways, journeys...
Your stories can be set in September 1825 and feature the opening of the railway or they can be set in any time period so long as they are inspired by trains... steam trains, diesel trains, trams, train stations, train tracks... all welcome!
300 to 1k wobbly words... any genre... any style... go wild with the whatifs!
What if...
- You hear a sound in the fog… a steam train approaching but the last train was years ago…
- At an abandoned train station, a ticket machine is still working…
- An old map shows the train lines but there are more stations shown than there are now…
- The train app suddenly shows that you have a ticket to somewhere you’ve never heard of…
- A night train stops on a remote stretch of track and you notice people start disappearing…
- Two strangers jump onto the wrong train by accident… is it meant to be?
Any of these or whatever springs to mind...
Have fun and happy writing. The time scale for this book is only ONE WEEK for submissions!
Deadline: NOON Monday 23rd June 2025
Book launch online: 6pm Friday 27th June 2025
Please email stories to: cgh@cghatton.com with the subject line TRAIN.
Our submission guides are the same as Harvey's Flash!Mob (submission guidelines here) so please check what you're letting yourself in for (original work only, fiction or creative non-fiction welcome, basic edits only, no AI, no fee, no royalties, for fun only) with the exceptions that we'd like stories that are clean language please, family-friendly, and that this book will be published under the Crossing The Tees banner in eBook only and will be available through the library eBook lending services. If at any point, the book is published in any other format, proceeds will go to the Crossing The Tees Book Festival. All rights remain with the authors... by submitting a story, you give us (CGH and Harvey Duckman, and Crossing The Tees) permission (non-exclusive, world-wide) to publish your story as part of this project. All stories submitted will be included but we reserve the right to not include a story if we think it's not suitable.
A note on wobbly word counts: 300 words is just a rough guide.. anything up to 1k words or so is fine xx
