Rebecca's short story A Beautiful Lie will be appearing in Bewildering Stories, and the flast fiction piece Dining With A Mermaid has been accepted for the 2012 edition of Pill Hill's Daily Flash:366 Days of Flash Fiction.

Rebecca's poem Making Waves is now available online at the Cherry Blossom Review.

Rebecca's short story, Caging Diana, will be appearing in the upcoming Red Skies Press anthology Howl: Echoes of the Hunt Edited by Mark Crittenden.

Rebecca's poem, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche will be appearing at The Camel Saloon.

Three of Rebecca's untitled short poems will be appearing in Heavy Handed Ink's upcoming chapbook NitTwitts, scheduled to be released in May 2011.

Look out for an untitled microfiction piece by Rebecca which will be appearing in Seedpod Publishing's Twitter fiction feed @seedpodpub on the 30th December.

The short humour piece FAO Gnome Man which has previously appeared on The Short Humour site will be included in their upcoming paperback anthology People of Few Words- Volume 3 along with a collection of forty nine more of the best short stories featured on the site during the last year.

An Update From Rebecca

My apologies for the long break in updates; I would like to reassure you that I will be returning to writing soon. In the meantime, this site has been updated to include new and upcoming publications.

Many Thanks

Due to a combination of personal illness and circumstances, Rebecca has had to reduce the amount of writing she is currently doing. Not to worry though; in a few weeks, she will be returning and we will be revamping the site in celebration!

Some more forthcoming appearances

Rebecca's poem Jazz Echoes will appear in Magnolia's Press on 17th September.

The (non-)poem Gremlins is scheduled to be featured at Danse Macabre's Du Jour section before the end of the year.

The short story Bringing Home The Beach will be featured in the upcoming horror anthology Seasons In The Abyss (Bloodbound Books).

Wishing, another short story, will be appearing in the December issue of Long Story Short

Another short story, Blinking, will appear in 69 Flavors of Paranoia, Issue 2 Volume 2 (the October/November issue).

And don't forget to look out for more articles by Rebecca soon to be posted at Butnu.co.uk and New Old Traditions.

Rebecca's poem And They Fear Bereadsticks is in this month's issue of the Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review

Rebecca's story Thrall's Sacrifice will be appearing in Red Skies Press Their Dark Masters anthology edited by Mark Crittenden, a collection of vampiric fiction.

Upcoming Appearances

Rebecca's short story Riveted will be appearing in FlashShot, a webzine of fantasy microfiction.

The short story Remaking The Raven, will appear in September's issue of EMG-Zine (the Raven Issue).

Rebecca's photography and an interview feature are scheduled to appear in the Spring issue of Dark Gothic Magazine.

Rebecca's poem Be Careful about the importance of internet safety for children has been made into a short video by Ceri Jones. Take a look on youtube.

Rebecca's short fiction piece Falling will be appearing in Issue 4 of Blink-Ink.

Her short poem Excuses will feature in Issue 9 of KillPoet.

Rebecca's poem Creatures of Remorse will be appearing in The Dark Fiction Spotlight and her mixed media piece Kisses will be appearing in Pocket Smut magazine.

Rebecca's short story Divorcing The Night is now available to read in Atlantean Publishing's online magazine Awen (Issue 8, 'Hidden Things').

As well as having a short story featuring in issue 13, Rebecca's photography will be featuring on the cover of Sex and Murder Magazine Issue 14.

One of Rebecca's micro-fiction pieces has been used by Thaumatrope, a SF, fantasy and horror Twitter magazine.

You can follow them on Twitter @thaumatrope.

Rebecca's work is featuring in today's Handful of Stones, a collection of moments of clear thought.

Rebecca's short story Read Me A Story is now live at Camroc Press Review.

As an apology for the lack of fiction posts for a little while, here's something a bit longer (and weirder) than usual from Rebecca:

Wrapping

Sticky children with sticky hands; gumming up book pages with grasping, greedy little fingers. Tapping on the pet shop cages (clack! clack! clack! Mommy I want one of those!) where shell-shocked multi-colour rodents cower in plastic houses. Cramming their stubby, chubby digits into their stubby, chubby noses… Sticky children are the worst of all.

Halloween… Faces caked in paint, fake blood and too much chocolate oozing down onto ragged bin-liner capes and pillow-case costumes. Fingers grasping (always grasping! always wanting more!) sticky sweeties, clutching handfuls of melted drumstick lollies, toffee coated apples, heat-deformed milk chocolate mice. Banging on doors with insatiable fists (trickle treat mister!). Throwing eggs while someone cowers behind the unwelcoming door. Viscous yolk and fragments of shell dripping onto doorsteps.

And Christmas? Shaking, poking, pawing at foil-wrapped boxes, sloppy kisses for distant relatives (on the cheek? on the lips? come kiss gran’ma precious!) with greasy turkey-smeared faces. Chocolate santas with chocolate reindeer melting under plastic trees to be smeared over walls, floors, faces… Even the snow (the crisp, clean, magnificent snow), torn up to make snowballs and snowmen, yellow snow, full of filth, turning to muddy slush in clammy mittened hands.

Even Summer days! Hours spent trailing sunscreen and melting ice-cream along overcrowded beaches, prodding demoralized donkeys with plastic spades and pawing at gaudy postcards (wish you were here…) with vinegar and chip-grease hands. Running in parks with muddy knees poking through frayed jeans or fixing bikes, smeared with brake oil.

Oh, and the parents! Oh god, the adults… Reeking of cheap perfumes masking stale sweat and desperation they oil their hair and paint their faces. Yellow nails chewed to the quick, flaking multicoloured varnish. Preening, pointing, smoking, stroking, scratching crotches and fluffing hair with ever-vacant faces…

The thought of them repulses me! Tugging on the hem of my sleeve with grubby hands, grimy fingers; ruffling my hair as they smile their wide, white smiles. I shudder even thinking about them. Kisses hello, kisses goodbye, greasy spittle-coated lips puckered out (pucker up!). Touching, touching, always touching… Unavoidable! Inescapable! Intolerable!

That is why I am going to wrap myself.

I start at the feet, pulling the clear plastic as tight as I can. I am wearing gloves so I am leaving no fingerprints behind. No defilement. I wrap the plastic around both legs, pressing them together, working up towards the knee.

I used to watch them from the window as they walked by; chewing gum like cows with cud, open-mouthed, blowing multicolour spit bubbles (pop! spit! start all over). Or taking loud gulps from brightly coloured bottles, passing them round, sharing spittle with a friend.

I bind the knees tightly, overlapping the plastic edges, round and round. Several layers thick; the roll is plenty thick. I will be impenetrable, untouchable in my armour. I will be like a paladin; pure and untainted. I pull the plastic taut over my thighs, my hips.

A plastic cocoon. My chrysalis. I am wrapping myself like a larvae. Once I am inside, tightly bound, maybe inside I will change, transform myself. Maybe I will emerge someday as someone else. Maybe then I will understand the joy of these little daily contaminations…

I wrap my waist, my chest. My feet are tingling. I ignore them. I wrap my shoulders, slower now, struggling to move. No more sticky fingers, no more grabbing, grasping hands, smearing, sticking, greasing my skin. I wrap my neck. My breath rasps in my throat (in…out...in…out…).

See what they have made me do? Squeezing every orange on the shelf, tapping every apple (here’s your change mister! wiping his face on the back of his hand). Licking the plate clean, gravy dripping down their chins. Licking their fingers when they turn the page. Sucking their fingers when they bleed. Kissing it better… Kissing only makes it worse.

I wrap my head...

Rebecca's short story 'An Independent Mind' is now available to read at Sillymess.

Rebecca's first article for Simply Woman Magazine about Windowsill Herb Gardening is now available to read.

New articles written by Rebecca are now available to read online; visit These Old New Traditions to read A Floral Feast or Zombie Digest to find out about real life 'zombies' such Clairvius Narcisse!

Rebecca's short poem Valleys (containing adult language) will be featuring in Hobo Pancakes in the upcoming issue.

More Up-Coming Appearances!

We are excited to announce a number of upcoming appearances of Rebecca's work in various publications:

Rebecca's mixed media (photography/poetry) piece Crimson Moment will be appearing in issue 14 of House of Horror.

The short fiction piece Corpus Erotica will be appearing in Sex and Murder Magazine.

The poem Overlording, which has featured on this blog, will be appearing in Vox Poetica.

A review written by Rebecca on the classic short story The Vampyre by Polidori should be available to read at Anything Horror later today.

The short story Bonsai from Rebecca's blog is now also available to read at MicroHorror.

Rebecca's poetry will be being discussed on Saint FM's Reflections show (presented by the delightful Anthony Mayer) broadcast between 10pm and 11pm. Rebecca will feature provisionally on the 2nd August; fans are welcome to e-mail in to the show on the night

A short fact-based article by Rebecca will be appearing at the Zombie Digest site; we hope it will be the first of many!

We are delighted to be able to announce that Rebecca's poem Sacrifice will be appearing in Cherrypicked Hands.

Rebecca's short story To Dust is now available to read at Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers.

Rebecca's non-fiction article on Lavender in The Kitchen will be appearing in These New Old Traditions later today; we hope this will be the first of many contributions to the site!

Rebecca's short story FAO Dragon is now available to read at Postcard Shorts.

The Most Beautiful

You are the most beautiful one of all. That is what they tell me before they die, each and every one of them. They come towards me as if mesmerised, eyes glazing, arms outstretched. They have seen no other of my kind; I am unique in my perfection. I honour them with a quick death.

Once I have devoured them, they tell me other things, snaking around inside my head like little moments of madness. Becoming you was the deepest ecstasy, they tell me. Becoming you has made us complete. Now they are beautiful too. We have become vain together.

I hate the mirrors, though. Mirrors are liars, bitter liars with no true image of their own. They distort me with their dead, glassy eyes, slicking my body with oil and mouldering feathers, shaping my soft, red lips into a wicked, toothless smile. I like to smash them, their fragments reflecting back one hundred little pieces of cruelty as I picked the slivers out of my fingers. I like to grind the shards into dust with my heels. What do you see now? I ask them.

They are soothing me now, stroking themselves over my aching pride. There are no others who compare to you, they promise me. You are the most beautiful of all.

I believe them.

Rebecca's first article is now live at Zombie Command; go take a look!

Rebecca's short story The Reunion will be appearing in the Pill Hill Daily Bites of Flesh Anthology.

Rebecca will be producing some fiction and non-fiction based articles for Zombie Command, starting with an instructional article about trapping small animals for food which will go live this week.

Rebecca's short story Cleaning will be appearing in Litsnack.

Rebecca's short non-fiction pieces 'Superfluous Benches' and 'Do Not Touch' are now live on Butnu.co.uk; these should be her first of many contributions to the site; we look forward to reading them!

Also available to view at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJZmDql0CJU

Rebecca's short story Party Girl will be appearing in the upcoming Wicked East Anthology 'Cup of Joe'

Rebecca will now be writing regular pieces for Butnu, 'The online home of fun and boring', the first of which will hopefully be available to read today.

Rebecca's short story The Awesome Cake will be appearing in issue one of the Ponytail webzine. We look forward to reading their first issue which is due out around Mid-September!

A short non-fiction piece by Rebecca called Italians will be appearing in the Adventures in Estrogen blog in the next few weeks.

Rebecca's mixed media piece Restrictions (already featured on this blog) will be appearing in the special first edition of Kerouac's Dog Magazine due to be released in September.

Rebecca's short story Burning in Rome will be appearing in the historic/fantasy fiction online anthology 'Matters Most Extraordinary'.

Moments

More Appearances!

Rebecca's flash humour piece FAO Gnome Man is now available to read at The Short Humour Site.

Also, one of Rebecca's microfiction pieces will be appearing in the Seven By Twenty Twitter feed.

Rebecca's microfiction piece Read Me A Story has just been accepted for use in the Camroc Press Review; we look forward to seeing it there, hopefully in early August.

A Vampire Moment

This is a vampire moment. Writhing and leech-like, it feeds on the warm lifeblood of time until it bloats beyond containment and bursts into reality. Here, inside this moment, shadows wind around each other as impossible creatures wait to be born from this cold, dark womb. They long to feed upon the deep, thick emotions of light and living, sinking warped teeth into the true reality to suckle out it’s nourishment.

You have felt the closeness of a moment like this before; the moment when you have forgotten where you are and why you were there, the time when you jolted awake desperate to breathe despite the tightening in your chest. Those are a taste of the horror as that moment squirms against your reality, your existence, a taste of the panic you would feel if that moment were to burst and drag your mind, screaming, into the vacuum of it’s abyss. Those creatures, those twisting shades, would seep into your mind and take it for their own.

Rebecca's short fiction piece Twisted will be appearing at WeirdYear, a webzine for 'weird flash fiction' on September 9th.

A short untitled piece written by Rebecca will be appearing in A Handful Of Stones, a site dedicated to 'polished moments of paying attention', on the 4th August.

The surreal flash piece Blowing is now available to read at Clutching at Straws.

The short story 'There Used To Be Trees', a "flash-length journey through a maze of erstwhile humanity" is now available to read at Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine.

An interview page featuring a brief interview with Rebecca has been added to the site. If you have any other questions you would like us to ask Rebecca, we would love to hear from you!

Timeless

In a timeless moment
There is nothing left
Except
The whisper
Of memories which were never made.

Creatures Of Remorse

She twisted as she withered, driven back by brightness;
Blackened and burnt, aching for mercy she crawled,
Writhing and slick, membranes thickening.
In sympathetic shadow-arms
She licked her wounds with forked tongues.
Bitter-sharp, sin-shaped, she brooded,
Another woman’s guilty secret.
Baring blunted teeth to blind shadows
She hissed her dread through pursed, black lips,
Jaws cracking, glistening between the splits.
Remorse is fleeting, a momentary throb
Scars sloughed like so much dead skin
Acid to ashes, denial to dust;
With hands never shaped for holding
She embraced her despair and shed her shame.

Probably

There probably used to be something here.

It probably heard me coming.

It was probably life-changing,

Revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, evolutionary,

And other -utionary things

But that probably doesn’t make any difference now.

More Upcoming Publications

Rebecca's poetry will be appearing in Clutching at Straws magazine, an online magazine for 'Poetry of Unusually High Unusualness'.

Her short story "There Used To Be Trees" will be appearing in Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine


Potential Delays in Updating

Due to unforeseen circumstances resulting in technical difficulties, there may be some delay in updates to this site over the coming few days. We apologise for any inconvenience and hope to have this resolved as soon as possible.

Appearance in Disingenuous Twaddle

Rebecca's poem 'Shed Shadow' will be appearing in Disingenuous Twaddle, a 'visual and linguistic experiment'.

Upcoming Anthology Appearance

Rebecca's flash fiction piece 'Driving' will be appearing in the upcoming Pill Hill Press anthology Daily Flash: 365 Days of Flash Fiction.

Another Upcoming Appearance in Trapeze Magazine

Trapeze Magazine has selected another of Rebecca's microfiction pieces, Forgetting, to be published on August 21st.

Bonsai

He had a passion for bonsai; little trees lined the shelves of his greenhouse, perfect miniatures painstakingly shaped. Only an expert would know the effort which went into those gnarled little trunks, the delicate twists of the branches. Sometimes, he wished he could bonsai people, shaping his family into perfect miniatures of themselves. Live would be so much simpler.

He paused, thought for a moment, then picked up the clippers and hid them in his apron pocket. His wife would be home soon...

To The Neighbour's Cat to Appear in Hazard Cat

The mixed media piece To The Neighbour's Cat (already available here at Bewildering Circumstances- see below) will be appearing in Hazard Cat at some time in the near future.


Rebecca's own cat, Muta, is especially excited to hear this as he is a Hazard Cat himself.

Overlording

On-screen, he is a five-star level ninety-three multi-lord- eighteen kingdoms!

Never forget the eighteen kingdoms!-

King of all he surveys.

Climbing through valleys and exploring caves, he adventures daily

(is the laundry in the dryer?)

He has the biggest ever sword.

They admire his royal attire, his princely physique, aquiline roman nose

(are you ever going to wash that bath robe? Or take it off?)

The layout of his latest tower, adding every hour to our resources

(what about the groceries? haven't you moved at all today you lazy lump?)

Crushing his mighty foes beneath his feet

(where did these socks come from, they smell disgusting!)

Presiding over all in his mighty throne room

(this bathroom is revolting, what the hell is that green stuff?)

Unstoppable and all-powerful

(I'm tripping the fuses...)

Eskimo Pie Appearance

Three of Rebecca's modern haiku will be appearing at Eskimo Pie during August.

The site is definitely worth a look, even a quick browse proves there's some fantastic work published there! (Not that we're biased...)

He wishes he was somewhere else; leaning on the kitchen countertop, he watches the party from behind dark-tinted lenses. Revelry is a spectator sport.

He doesn't do small talk. Or long, drawn-out speeches. Mostly, he doesn't talk at all. Maybe the silence makes him interesting. He shrugs to himself.

Someone has dropped a cigarette butt in his drink. Probably the short bleach-blonde with the neon pink shoes. He tips it away, pours another glass of something smooth. Across the room, a woman in an over-stretched, sequin dress is grinding her ass against a man in a novelty sombrero. He sips his drink.

Man, he wishes he was somewhere else...

Two More Appearances

We are pleased to announce that two of Rebecca's fiction works are now available to read online.

The first, a flash fiction piece called Three Inches, has been published by the online weird stories magazine Sillymess.

The second, Bad News, is a fiction piece using only six sentences. It is currently exclusively available through the 6S Social Network site at Rebecca's 6S blog.

We hope you enjoy them.

The Secret Language of Flowers

Here are some flowers.
If they could talk,
They would be telling you
That they are orange.
But they can't.

Running

Some things happen
In full colour;
Inescapably vivid moments
When the blood
Runs down the walls
And the runners
Leave footprints
On the tiles...

Announcing Two Up-Coming Appearances!

We are pleased to announce that Rebecca's work will be appearing in two up-coming publications:

Towards the beginning of August, one of Rebecca's micro-fiction pieces will be appearing in Trapeze Magazine, a new Twitter-based web-zine. Follow them on Twitter @trapezemag or visit their website to read extra-short fiction pieces by Rebecca and a selection of great authors.

Also, look out for one of Rebecca's poems this Winter in issue 53 of the wonderfully-named Obsessed With Pipework poetry magazine.

Unfolding

There isn't anyone as beautiful as you,
Not in all the whole world.

I have watched patiently as you gently unfolded

Undaunted by rainy days;

Reaching up into the freshness of the sky

Until you could almost touch the sun.

Welcome to the blog of Writer / Artist Rebecca L. Brown.

You can look forward to regular updates about Rebecca's upcoming publications, random (and sometimes puzzling) thoughts and exclusive previews you won't find anywhere else.

You can follow Rebecca through twitter @rlbrownwriter to read micro-fiction and micro-poetry. Please e-mail all queries or enquiries to rebeccalbrown@hotmail.co.uk. Rebecca will respond as quickly as possible but please be patient.

Rebecca hopes you'll enjoy reading her work as much as she enjoys writing it. She also hopes the giant starfish which hides under her bed will find somewhere else to live soon...