One strength of flash fiction is that it can transport you into a mood or state of mind in the time it takes to brush your teeth. One pitfall of flash fiction is that because of that brevity, it requires a certain diligence and attention to detail at a higher magnitude than short stories or novels. In this way, it’s more like poetry, except that flash fiction also requires a plot, where poetry usually doesn’t. Flash fiction has a beginning, middle, and end, just like a longer story. Something must happen, some turn must occur in the characters or the events.
Jack C. Buck’s flash fiction pieces in “Deer Michigan,” a collection coming out mid-November from Truth Serum Press, are different. They don’t adhere to a plot so much as they follow their own internal logic, a confessional “On the Road” style of unedited diaristic writing.