Our stories are short, but loud -- fire crackers of fiction. They command a reader's attention with stunning visuals and shocking emotional twists. This is the power of flash fiction, a literary practice that focuses on concision and forces a writer to dig deep to find the kernel of every story.

We at The Green Flash believe that stories so brief will put short fiction back in the hands of the reading public. There was a time when it was common for the general public to read short stories. Now, the short story has become a writer's medium. It seems that only those who study the craft enjoy the craft. The short story is read in school books and on through college, and then for most people the reading stops. Life speeds up. There are deadlines to meet, buses to catch, bills to pay, errands to run. There is no time to sit and enjoy a short story for most of those hurtling through life at great speeds. This is a condition in society that has become all-too-common. We at The Green Flash can't stop time, despite our many efforts and failed experiments -- which have caused several explosions and a gaggle of two-headed babies (yes, a gaggle). What we can do is accommodate that busy lifestyle, and provide an escape from it for brief, monumental moments.

With flash fiction, a reader can get his or her daily dose of literature in the time it takes to ignore a commercial break. It takes 30 minutes to watch a silly sitcom and earn a laugh, two hours to watch an Oscar worthy film and have your emotions stirred, hours upon hours to finish that novel and have whole worlds opened up to you -- or five minutes for one story in The Green Flash to take you away from the hustle, whirl your imagination, and twist your feelings.

A green flash is an atmospheric phenomenon. When watching the sunset over a vast body of water, the sun will dip below the horizon and, if conditions are right, there will appear a green flash of light. It may only last a second, but it's a monumental moment. This is the Monu-moment. This is flash fiction. This is The Green Flash.