I’d like to start by saying I know some weird, weird people. A challenge of sorts was laid down on Twitter earlier today by Twitternaut Georg Greg that read, “ALCOHOL – because no great story or song ever started with someone eating a salad.” Before I knew it, people were rising to the challenge. But it took one of my favorite troublemakers, Brooke Bolander to birth a genre out of it.
But there is only so much you can do with 140 characters on Twitter. So, I’m making this a real challenge. Here we go folks. The Bitter Greens – Salad Noir gauntlet has been thrown down.
Details: I’m looking for flash fiction pieces, with a hard (and totally arbitrary) word count limit of 700 words. The theme is “Salad Noir,” and salads have to be part of the first paragraph. Deadline is June 21st, just in time for the Summer Solstice. I’ll pick two stories and publish them online here in time for the 4th of July. The first place story gets $10 and I’ll award $5 for the runner up.
Submit via email in standard manuscript format as an attachment to bebopdiablo@gmail.com with the subject line of “SALAD NOIR” followed by your last name.
Yes, I know some weird, weird people. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Now, get writing!
Tales from the Ragged Edge 
I saw Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein at a Saturday matinee when I was thirteen. I was becoming old enough to recognize that the world (not just my own life) was a pretty messed up place… violent, confused, heart breaking… I was considering bailing on the whole enterprise and was sitting in the theater questioning what good reason there might be to stick around. I was answered with a vision that has kept me going for the rest of my life (about 50 years so far)… and that movie was playing while it happened. I have never believed that was mere coincidence