Our first featured author is here — welcome Chris Clemons to the spotlight, with his micro “All the Birthdays”…

All the Birthdays

After the exhausted bunnies and deflated bouncy-castle are discarded from Janie Ratzinger’s party, it’s time for cake. A pink monstrosity piled with melting Barbies drips in the summer sunlight, topped with eight crooked candles. Make your wish, my perfect darling. Janie narrows her flat green eyes (at ME? because I scored three goals??). Then she blows out the candles very carefully, with a scary smile. The next day mom says we’re not going to Happy Kingdom with my friends this weekend, but I’m invited to Janie’s birthday - isn’t that nice? I say it was supposed to be MY birthday, but apparently not. I check the calendar. It’s blank. At Janie’s next party she totally ignores me, bullies the clown nobody asked for, criticises the gift-wrapping, and spills Coke on Olivia’s dress, making her cry. The cake is even bigger, wobblier, with goops of plastic-looking frosting. As she extinguishes the candles, Janie stares hard at sniffling Olivia. Then she whispers her wish, eyes squeezed tight like fists. I watch real close, try to figure out how she stole away my birthday, but Janie’s mother tells me not to be greedy. Thank you so much for coming, she coos, hovering by the open door with Disney gift bags full of Dollarama trinkets. We’ll see you soon.

The Stats:

Published: 17 October 2025
Magazine: Night Shades
Word Count: 215
Submission History: Rejected by Ghost Parachute, NewMyths, Fairy Tale Review, Crepuscular and Uncanny. Withdrawn from Augur.
Payment: $85 CAD

Inspiration for the story:

“‘All the Birthdays’ was in response to a prompt in an online writing community — they have contests which I try to enter weekly, even if my idea is hurried or trash, because at least I’m writing SOMETHING, right? The prompt was “miss the most”. I’d been attending way too many of these parties with my kids, watching grade schoolers spluttering all over their cake candles after making these eyes-closed, performative wishes, and in an unfairly cynical moment I wondered what the most selfish wish of all might be - the old infinite birthday loophole! But who might miss out in the aftermath?

The original story did not win the weekly contest, but I expanded marginally beyond the 200 word limit with the help of some critiques, and started sending it out immediately. I have some issues with patience.”

On working with Night Shades:

“I've had three stories rejected by Night Shades before this one, and three since. I think the fact that this story was so short - half the word count maximum - worked in its favour: tight focus on premise/voice. After working with a lot of editors I can say Anna Reser is comparatively efficient. 10 days between submission and acceptance, informal email agreement, PayPal transfer same day, online proof page three weeks later, published live a week after that. No edits - text appeared exactly as submitted. I didn't choose the picture (and I guess I could've objected during proof) but I loved what she came up with! Super creepy. Overall: great experience from a writer's perspective!”

My thoughts: First of all, keeping the micro all in one paragraph is very de rigeur in lit mags these days, and I think it works quite well in Chris’s story — really adds to the ‘stream of consciousness’ of the narrator. Speaking of which, Chris has really embodied the narrator’s POV, using child-like words like ‘wobblier’ and describing Janie’s smile as ‘scary.’ A consistent voice is non-negotiable in microfiction! I also love the way Chris’ speculative element is subtle — it’s only after we read the whole micro that we realize there’s a birthday Groundhog-Day-thing going on.

Chris actually gave a great micro tip as he discussed this micro’s submission history:

“Some of these market submissions might make no sense - this was a ridiculous swing for Ghost Parachute - but I was often submitting as "prose poetry" (worth trying for one-paragraph stories, esp. speculative).”

It’s a very logical leap from microfiction to ‘prose poetry,’ so don’t be afraid to retool your drabbles into prose poems, and even full blown free verse!

Thanks for being my first victim guest author, Chris! If you’d like to read more of Chris’s writing, you can find it here!

Do you want to be featured here? Of course you do! Send me some of your microfiction: literary, genre, beautiful, weird… doesn’t matter. But here’s what does matter:

• it must be a reprint / previously published — I don’t want to use up any first publishing rights

• it must be clearly visible online — you need to include a link to where I can see it

• 500 words max

• you can send me up to three at a time — please don’t deluge me with your tiny treasures

• if you wrote the micro to a prompt, let me know — I love to see how other people’s brains work

• if you were published in one of the micro markets featured on this substack, please mention it — we need to know they are all eventually-crackable…

I’m definitely not a ‘microfiction expert,’ but I know what I like, and if you’re sending a work to me, someone else obviously liked it, too. So in addition to presenting them, I’ll add a comment on why I enjoyed the piece and what (IMO) makes it good microfiction.

So come on — toot your horn already!

I can’t wait to read your pocket-sized publications!