Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction - Book 1

If the efforts of writing a novel were analogues to a 9 inning baseball game, then Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction would be a batting cage. In this fascinating genre of writing, each work is inspired by a photograph, needs to be strictly 250 words or less, contain a beginning, middle and end, while achieving what a hitter, or an author in this case wishes to achieve: Impact.

Theodore Jerome Cohen hits it over the fence, time and time again. In fact, his "batting average" shows his award winning contributions to the Indies Unlimited Internet Blog, the hosting organization for these contests as a super-star in performance. In his recently compiled collection of work titled Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction - Flash Fiction Anthology Book 1 he artfully displays reprints of his entries written under his name and that of Alyssa Devine, a pen name he also uses. Each Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction entry transports the reader from the first sentence into the setting or time period, followed by background and character development, only to end with, in many cases, a mental "wow" in the mind of the reader. I can see where this type of exercise has contributed to the characteristic style of Ted Cohen's novels, as he often brings the final sentence of a chapter into a sort of a cliffhanging reveal of heightened intellectual stimulation. Ted sharpens the point on his pen with these challenging creative exercises, only to transport these skills into his larger volumes of writings. One would think this type of Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction writing would be good for people with ADD - not wanting to invest time and effort into paging chapters of character development or read paragraphs of descriptive location settings. In fact I profess it is just the opposite. You see, each of these condensed, highly efficient and taciturn excerpts expand into volumes within the reader's mind. That is what I meant by the word "impact." One has to stop to think how they may have been misled by their own preconceived notions of where the story was going, only to see the truth at the end as not being hidden but in full view from the onset. As in art, the trickery of a painting deceiving the eye, known as a Trompe-l'œil, would have Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction comprised of tromperie de l'esprit, or trickery of the mind.

Dr. Cohen's love of music is obvious as he writes about The Violin Maker; his educated acumen of literature is explained in the notes to Missles; Bridge sets off the start of this book with a home run, thinking the role of the characters were reversed; and Survivors, a story about two Civil War soldiers will always linger in my mind. There are many stories entered into the Indies Unlimited contest pushing the limits of the rules of engagement for this contest style of writing to exemplify his mastery of the art of literary communication. In his collection of the shortest of stories, the significance of words are first selected, edited and trimmed to the core of thoughts to bring a sequence of words and dialogue, transporting the reader to a place and time inspired by a photograph. To illustrate again the brevity of the stories within Creative Ink, Flashy Fiction, two entries could easily fit within the word count of this review.