Overcharged with Dead

Overcharged with Dead was inspired by a QI fact and a Jude Higgins online workshop prompt. I wrote the words 'Winchester Geese' on my phone during an episode of QI and did some research into the Southward sex workers named after the Bishop of Winchester who gave out prostitution licensees to work in this area of London. 

When Jude asked us to look out on the solstice morning and write about it, I wondered what lockdown would be like for a sex worker during the pandemic. 

I entered it for the 'Home' themed flash fiction prompt in Mslexia and I was delighted that Meg Pokrass chose it for the Exploring Our Animal Natures Issue 87.

The Berlin Heart

The Berlin Heart is in Paper and Ink Literary Zine #16, the Rebellion Issue. Available for pre-order.

One pound from every zine pre-order, and five pounds from print sales, will be donated to Stop Hate UK. An anti hate crime charity that does great work here in the UK, and is sadly needed more than ever given the current state of affairs.

Circle Time

Circle Time was one of the winners of the Waterloo Festival short story competition run in collaboration with Bridge House Publishing with the theme of : Transforming Communities. 

The ebook anthology of winning entries was launched on June 12th at an online event and will be published in paperback with the previous year's winners as part of a trilogy of themes in December. 

Rubin's Vase

Rubin's Vase was published on National Flash Fiction Day 2020 on June 6th.

I got the idea after I watched an episode of Tales from the Loop when a character was shown as being missing from everywhere they had been. I liked the idea of filling that space. 

I researched 'negative space' and started the piece on my phone before I went to sleep and finished it on my laptop next day, pushing for the NFFD FlashFlood deadline. 

'Ma' is used in my story, not just as a missing maternal family figure but as the Japanese word roughly translated as 'negative space'. 

Although the story started out with the name 'Negative Space' when I saw another flash of the same name I changed it. I knew of Rubin's Vase but didn't know that's what it was called. It fit perfectly with my themes around communication, shifting perspective and filling in the blanks.

The Karma Economy

The Karma Economy was published in May in Crack the Spine: The Year Anthology 2019.

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THE YEAR

A Crack the Spine Anthology

2019

In June 2019 I went to a free event at the Barbican run by The Orwel Foundation's Ministry of Plenty. This event and the 70th anniversary of George Orwell's book 1984 prompted this piece, as well as campaign's such as 'me too' and those related to mental health and inequality, in an increasingly capitalist society where much data is quantitative rather than qualitative and the 1% outweigh the other 99%.

The Karma Economy is looking at what it would be like to balance the books in a different way. To read this piece and some other fantastic stories find it to buy here or you can check out the first few pages for free and read my story there.

7 Photos Lie on My Mother's Body | Rising & Falling with the Sea

These two were published on April 15th in Thorn Literary Magazine (Spring Issue, 2020 p.22-25).

Rising and Falling with the Sea went through many incarnations. I nearly gave up on it. It helped to leave it alone and come back to it after reading other stories for inspiration. It started in a workshop by Judith Johnson where the challenge was to start a story with a body. The Perkins-Gilman story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) prompted the addition of magic realism & references to mental health. Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927) gave me the title, the refrain and the artist view and for the most recent draft I reread Shelly's Ozymandias (1826).

I wrote Seven Photos Lie on My Mother's Body more recently, to have a go at a list story. I like exploring memory as a theme because I have no autobiographical memory and have to rely on photos and other people's memories - both of which can lie.

The Birthday Cake Approaches

This micro, published by Paragraph Planet, on April 10th is a response to our time with Covid19 and a look into perhaps how a child might look back on it, this time next year.

Tulips for the Homeless

Tulips for the Homeless was written as a YA flash which Reflex Fiction published as having just missed out on longlisting.

 This piece came from seeing a bunch of tulips by a sleeping bag outside Westminster Station. I set it in Cork in Ireland where Patrick's bridge had just got a makeover and took some of the themes which come with regeneration and homelessness and community.

 The tulips I saw as a symbol of hope, like spring or the sunrise of a new day.

The Room on the Ledge

The Room on the Ledge was published in Issue Five of The Wellington Street Review, a 'quarterly journal specialising in creative responses to the past'.

The story came from a memory of a visit to an old hotel on the coast of England and experience of inner-city regeneration in London.

The Cubital Fossa

The Cubital Fossa was printed in the beautifully designed Ellipsis Zine, Seven: She Cries Honey.

The Cubital Fossa was one of those stories that comes from a question. It was an August evening in 2019 when it was so hot I found sweat on the inside of my elbow and I wondered what that part of the elbow was called. I paired that with some of what I knew about hyper-mobility (which my daughter and I have) and some other themes which I've thought about as a youth and community worker and treated it all with a touch of magic-realism.

Other Uses for a Woman's Body

'Other Uses for a Woman's Body' was written to address Lunate's themed competition for International Women's Day. As I usually write with more than one theme in mind when our Idea Store Creative Writing Class tutor talked about Green Week at the library and writing themed flashes for that I entwined the themes with first line I liked as a starting point:

"When we ran out of sandbags we used our women's bodies."

"Other Uses for a Woman’s Body by Rosaleen Lynch. This story captivated us with a dystopian world and the sense of history and carefully constructed sense of family contained within. So much is achieved in this small story, containing a deeply compelling narrative voice and imagery that stuck with us long after we finished reading. It is a story that throws its reader into the deep-end of the action and keeps them there, unable to turn away from the unfolding events, rescuing them only at the very end with a sliver of hope"

Submarine

My short story Submarine was published in Issue #51 Metalheads of Jellyfish Review.

This story began on a train to Whitstable when I first saw an old submarine leaning in the estuary we were crossing. It was a year later before I went back to the image, when I went back to Whitstable and I began writing the story while we were held up crossing on the same bridge. The time that had passed between crossings gave me the story to tell.

Red Grass

Delighted to have my short story Red Grass published in the Motherhood edition of The London Reader (Winter 2019) alongside established names like Emma Donoghue.

The London Reader's Foreword: This painful work of minifiction by Rosaleen Lynch portrays an incident of domestic violence similar to what far too many women face. While those whose job it is to be guardians of the peace can end up complicit in abuse, it is often mothers, as we see in "Red Grass", who are forced to show strength and take on the role of peace-keepers themselves.

Support The London Reader through Patreon and read this and other issues.

My Father the Somniloquist

My Father the Somniloquist 

in

Rendez-Vous and Short Édition Story Dispensers.

The October issue has 1, 3 and 5 minute pieces...

..."ranging from bone-chilling poems to cerebral and evocative short stories that challenge the relationship between material and immaterial, reality and the paranormal."

Flamingos of the Salinas

City of Stories was a London Libraries partnership with Spread the Word to discover and create stories by: 

• Celebrates/promotes stories to readers in London libraries
• Engages diverse communities with telling their own stories
• Supports the development of emerging short story writers

In 2018, over 800 people participated in City of Stories. The winning entries were published in a City of Stories anthology, available to read in participating libraries across London.

My story Flamingos of the Salinas was published in the 2018 City of Stories anthology.

My Mother Left me for a Tree

The Word For Freedom

A collection of 24 short stories celebrating a hundred years of women’ suffrage, from writers inspired by the suffragettes and whose stories, whether set in 1918, the current day or the future, focus on the same freedoms that those women fought for so courageously.

Through this anthology Retreat West Books is proud to support Hestia and the UK Says No More campaign against domestic abuse and sexual violence.

 
Reviews:

Portobello Book Blog

The Literary Shed

The Literary Sofa

Hair Past a Freckle

Write Right

My Reading Corner

Books, Life and Everything

 


My Mother Left Me for a Tree is a short story exploring how feelings around abandonment may not concern themselves with how loss occurs - whether someone dies, leaves or isn't emotionally present. And how/if these feelings manifest may not be as expected.

The Word for Freedom is available  to buy in kindle and paperback. Proceeds go to Hestia who  support over 9,000 adults & children in crisis across London every year with their experiences of domestic abuse, modern slavery & mental health needs.

On Writing: 5 Short Stories

Lost Words 

Words: 100

Theme/Genre: Flash fiction on memory 

Why? Poor memory, recent Alzheimer developments and the use of memory for writing bring my fears to mind. The challenge was to write those fears in 100 words.

Published by: Friday Flash Fiction

Soul Brothers

Words: 360

Theme/Genre: Flash fiction fairy tale on the struggles of individuals V's society

Why? My three brother's were the inspiration for this. I tried to capture something of their individual talents and characters and their unifying and universal quests as men.  

Published by: Flash Flood Journal

Rusted

The Shop of Preserved Curiosities

Words: 500

Theme/Genre: Short story addressing the set theme 'Curiosity'. 

Why? Initially 'curiosity killed the cat' came to mind, followed by the over -used Schrodinger's cat. I veered clear of cats turning instead to the fear and excitement of the unknown, from the curiosity shop window to that of a relationship.

Published by: Dear Damsels

Rusted

Words: 479
Theme/Genre: Flash fiction addressing the theme 'Punk'
Why? Relationships can get a little rusted, pins can hold  anything together and rebellion comes in many guises.

Published by: Paper and Ink Literary Zine

 Paper and Ink Literary Zine (2017, p. 17)

Under the Gaze of the Lion

Words: 710
Theme/Genre: Short story
Why? Prompted by visits to The Last Tuesday Society in London's East End and Ireland's Fota Wild life & Conservation Park in Cork.
Published by: Ellipsis Zine