The year 2007 marked my first attempt at doing something different from poetry. I wrote a play, titled In the Silence of Words.

The completion of that project made me realize that I wanted to be more than just a poet. I wanted to write fiction, especially short stories. So, I set out to do exactly that.

My initial excitement slowly gave way to frustration, though. As a perfectionist who reads a lot of classics, I noticed a major shortcoming in my style. Unlike my favorite authors, I had an uncanny inability to write descriptions. That inability bothered me to the point of stifling my creativity.

I returned to poetry a little disappointed but also hopeful. I knew from experience that I might have looked at things the wrong way. It would take me 14 years to finally realize what that wrong way was.

After the release of After the Fires of Day: Haiku Inspired by Kahlil Gibran & Alphonse de Lamartine in 2021, I started thinking about short stories again. My rich experience with photography and content creation had broadened my horizons, leading to a noticeable change in my writing style. Also, my work as an anthology editor had put me in contact with a variety of excellent writers, some of whom specialized in flash fiction. The genre was intriguing and seemed to fit my style better than short stories.

While writing my first piece of flash fiction, I realized that I followed the same pattern as for my play. Dialogues and the unsaid actually outshone descriptions, rendering them almost pointless.

I had a eureka moment! The haiku is my favorite form of poetry. In a haiku, the message is driven by conciseness and simplicity. Every word counts. This is exactly how I write!

To cement this “discovery”, I created my own literary form: the Flashku. Containing between 50 and 100 words, the Flashku is a short piece of flash fiction that draws inspiration from an image and “borrows” seven words from another piece. What makes it unique is the mandatory positive / inspirational twist or resolution at the end.

I like to call the Flashku ‘poetic flash fiction’, because the limited number of words forces you to think like a haikuist. It is all about showing, and not telling. Descriptions have pretty much no “breathing space”.

After a few weeks and a few flashku later, I had finally come to terms with my inability to write descriptions. I had other strengths that had served me well until now. Re-reading my old short stories in that light shut down the last shred of self-critical voice in my head, allowing me to fully appreciate my quirky writing style.

Several of my stories stood out. Many rounds of rewriting and editing later, I decided to include three of them in this book. Another one, What Will Happen Next?, begged to be released as a standalone book.

In Her Own Words is a collection of short stories and flashku told from the point of view of women at different stages in their lives. They deal with universal topics, but are not meant to be just female-centric. People may be very different in most areas, but I believe that we also share common goals and ideals.