Welcome to our anniversary issue! This marks the beginning of our fifth year of publication, and we couldn't be prouder of what we've achieved — with your support and encouragement. We are now regularly exceeding 10,000 visits to our site per month. That's a very good thing!

Other Highlights:

• We're pleased to report that the Guest Editor for our Winter 2005-2006 issue will be Lori Romero, whose work is included in this issue's Poetry section. Lori's poetry and short stories have been published in journals and anthologies which include Copper Nickel, flashquake, Citizen32, A Flasher's Dozen, Ibbetson St., Quercus Review, Plum Biscuit, Edgar Literary Magazine, and Pebble Lake Review. Her poetry chapbook, Wall to Wall, was recently published by Finishing Line Press.

  Lori also got some very good news recently...second place in the Writer's Digest Writing Competition, in the Nonrhyming Poetry category, for her poem "Eggs Dancing With Stones." Congratulations to Lori! Coming in second out of 17,357 entries in the contest is no small thing.

• Our own Barbara Jacksha will be published in the forthcoming Norton Anthology, Flash Fiction Forward. Great work, Barb!

• This must be Barbara's month ... her screenplay "Lac Mirage" won first place in a national screenwriting competition sponsored by Southwest Writers.

• And while we're bragging...Our own Art Director, Roger Paris, just won Best of Show for his painting of Spectrum Gorilla (see image at right) at the Columbian Park Zoo in Lafayette Indiana.

• Pamelyn Casto's Online Flash Fiction Class sold out within two weeks! The next session will be held some time in November. If you'd like more information about the class or would like to sign up to be notified as soon as a date is set, review the class information page.

• If you're a member of the Zoetrope Studio collective, be sure to stop in at the flashquake home office. From what we hear, editors Didi Wood and Barbara Jacksha know how to liven up a salon. Zmail Didi or Barb for an invite.

• Stop by our newly refurbished Recommendations page. Our editors and some alumni provide recommendations on books they've been reading, and for your convenience, we're working to link the books mentioned to the corresponding Amazon pages. For those of you who'd still like access to our big list of writing-related suggestions, you'll find a link to that list at the end of the current recommendations.

• Former flashquake contributor David Atkinson's first collection of poetry Thomas was published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast, in September 2005. The launch night in Ballymoney Town Hall, hosted by Ballymoney Borough Council Arts Committee was a huge success. The book has received critical acclaim in both the press and BBC radio.

  "The poems in Thomas speak to us all or as many of us who have shared the experiences of the writer. Apart from our days of 'carpe diem' and 'young men's fancies,' these poems mark the tragedies of life growing up in Northern Ireland. If we ever do grow beyond the stooped and stunted similitude of civilization that mars existence here and the platitudinous 'peace process,' the poems in Thomas are often painful reminders that the ghost still walks."
  — Richard Montgomery

  "I liked not just the quirk, cheeky haiku but the shorter aphoristic poems. Some of the longer poems are quite superb in many ways and of course that much more substantial and thought provoking. The 'comic relief' poems I think serve to point up the poignancy of the more seriously treated themes and subjects. It's quite a while since I read a collection that screamed 'publish me' and a brave while since I read a collection that I really wanted to do. These should have been the poems I wanted to write but didn't."
  — Dennis Greig, Lapwing Publications

  To purchase a copy of "Thomas" e-mail David at dawhiterocks@aol.com.