My Flash Fiction Story, Lost Lad, and an interview about my writing, on Helen Moat's fiction blog, Double Espresso

Lost Lad by guest writer, Mandy Huggins

In the midday sun, a lathe-thin cat toys with her lunch; a just-caught fish, its sleek scales now coated with dust. Eventually she settles under the table to eat, whilst fat black beetles hover like helicopters, their shiny bodies as thick as thumbs.

I think of the dung beetles we watched on the donkey track that day. They toiled in the shade of the olive groves, two of them, almost neck and neck, pursuing each other up the hill. You claimed your champion; the larger of the two, and you named him Turtle. I was left with the smaller beetle, the potential loser, and I named him after you: Lost Lad. The name I gave you when we met, when you told me you were a lost cause. One of the lost boys.

Turtle and Lost Lad stood on tiptoe, pushing their smooth golf balls of dung in a laboured race to the top. The balls juddered along the path, stumbling against small stones, stuttering to a near-halt as they adhered to fallen flowers and nubs of twig. Occasionally one of the beetles would stagger sideways. The ball would lose momentum and roll back an inch.

You placed a thin stalk of dry grass across the path: the finish line.

Then Turtle spurted ahead. He nearly made the stalk, and then stopped. He waited for his race mate, giving him a chance, and only as Lost Lad drew level did he set off again. Their balls touched the finish line in unison.

You turned to me then and asked if I would wait for you. You would be back here in one year’s time. We would walk up the donkey track again, side by side, serenaded by cicadas.

And I believed you, my lost lad, but you did not return. I should have seen that you were like the cat, not the beetle, and I was simply your plaything in the dust.

An Interview with Mandy Huggins

Mandy first of all, thank you for agreeing to being my next Double Espresso victim. I’m intrigued by your choice. I gave you a long list of place names and landmarks I’d taken from the Dark and White Peak District OS map. Why ‘Lost Lad’ – of all the choices given?

It’s a pleasure to be your next ‘victim’, Helen! Thank you for asking me!

The main images I have used in this story were already written, but I had forgotten about them until I saw this title choice… Both the dung beetle race and the cat with the fish were inspired by many holidays in Paxos, and a particular donkey track that I have walked many times. I tried to create a flash piece from it before but there was something missing. When I saw the title Lost Lad, it made me think of that piece and a way of making it work as a story. The entire piece is about being lost or about losing something. As well as the male character in the story being a lost cause – ‘my lost lad’ -  there is the question of who will lose or win the race, as well as whether the relationship will be lost or saved.

What I’ve loved about my guest pieces, is that almost every writer has approached the shared title in a completely different way from me. Your interpretation of ‘lost’ is also very different from mine – although neither of us, I’m pleased to say, has gone for the literal ‘lost in the woods’ kind of angle. Both of us explore the central character’s internal sense of being ‘lost’: Your character, ‘a lost cause’. Mine, a  lost mind, suffering from senile dementia. 

My story is grounded in my own experiences (as most of my stories are). How about you? (You mainly write non-fiction, I believe, and primarily travel pieces.)Is your story created purely from your imagination – or are your FF pieces taken from an experience in your life? What was the starting point for your story?

My flash stories are often based around personal experiences, and sometimes around a single image, observation, or moment that has stuck with me. There’s a strong sprinkling of imagination in there too of course!

Your ‘Lost Lad’ has all the hallmarks of a good travel piece: strong in observation, an acute sense of place, and closely observed detail, yet the piece has a well- structured narrative. What comes first for you, the setting or the story?

I think they carry equal weight, but I admit that the setting is very important to me. I try to create a place that is so vivid to the reader that they can almost feel the sand between their toes or smell the bougainvillea. I guess that if I can make them feel they are IN the story then I have them hooked! 

I’ve mentioned, Mandy, that you are also a travel writer. You’ve been short-listed in the Bradt Independent Travel Writing Competition, and this year you won the British Guild of Travel Writers New Writers Competition (deep breath!) Congratulations! Here I have to come clean and say I was pipped at the post (as runner up) – or maybe you won by quite a distance! Either way, you wrote a compelling narrative with a great twist at the end. Do you approach NF and FF quite differently? What do you think the two genres of writing have in common? 

I’ve never thought about it before, as my writing is mainly intuitive and unplanned. If it has any structure, plot or pace then it’s largely luck!  So no, I don’t think I approach them very differently at all. They cross over all the time, in that my fiction relies heavily on far-flung destinations and the effect and importance that places have in shaping people’s lives, and much of my travel writing involves a morsel of creative fiction – I never encourage the truth to get in the way of a good story!

You have also been successful in flash fiction competitions. What is it that draws you to flash fiction? And how do you rise to the challenge of writing a story within a few hundred words?

I hardly ever set out to write a flash story, it’s just what happens. Sometimes there is a single image or idea dancing about in my head that ends up as one because it has a beginning, a middle and an end… but most of my stories are quite stumpy – I think they average around 1000-1500 words, and my travel pieces are short too. I guess I’m a ‘flashy’ kind of girl!

What’s next for Mandy Huggins? What would you like to achieve as a writer?

I would love to write a literary novel or a full length travel book, but my writing time is limited – I have a full time day job too – and I can’t seem to give up the buzz of writing short fiction and travel pieces. I am trying to get a short story collection together at the moment, so that’s what I need to concentrate on right now.

Mandy, thanks for agreeing to contribute to Double Espresso. It was a real joy to read your finely crafted story and to interview you. Good luck with the future – and I hope our writing paths cross again.

Thanks for having me! This was my first ‘interview’ as a writer, so I hope my nerves haven’t let me down! I’m sure our paths will cross again, Helen. I hope so! 

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