“...proof that chatbots write better fiction than humans.”

Back in the summer of 2001, I began doing strange things. I started eating huge amounts of food–healthy food, high in protein, and plenty of greens. I couldn’t stand chocolate or citrus…

By Fiona Jones — There were Dark Trees near where we lived, twisted yews that my children decided had owls living in them. There was a Giant Tree, the

I am “good at writing”. That means I can communicate on paper, using words to build ideas both literal and imaginative. It means I choose good words for the task in hand, marshalling bo…

Back in my second or third year of teaching, there was a seven-year-old boy who always wanted to write about football. Any time I allowed “free story-writing”, he gave me a page of larg…

He opened his chubby fist and showed me what he had found: a tiny, grubby potato no bigger than a cherry. I smiled and told him what it was, promising  …

Don't Open That Box by Fiona Jones. Check out her latest article on the Blog of Burial Books when you get a chance and get scared!

Little Benjy couldn’t say “Benjy” yet. He called himself “Bee.” And before long, that’s what we all called him, too, until the day he decided that the real bees in  …

This is a book review. There’s an important book I believe everyone in the 21st century needs to read. It’s only 155 words long, hardly TL:DR; and it’s easy to find. You have no e…

“Eh, naw, lad.” Queensferry Mack spat into the water. “Ye’ll no be gettin a brig ayean they waters. There’s seventy men’ll die afore ever ye span the Forth.” The engineer laughed. “We’re pretty good a...

How do you know when there is a dead body in the room? Check out Fiona Jones article on our Burial Books blog to find out!

By Fiona M Jones The snowgates open in spring, giving access across the Highlands towards Fort William.

Horrible Dreams is a new article by Fiona Jones on Burial Books website. Check out the article and get some insight into an author's head!

Where do you put children in horror stories as an author? Check out the article by Fiona Jones on Burial Books website!

It has always been a mystery to me: how do farmers manage to grow carrots that are perfectly straight, single-rooted, and almost uniform in shape and size, when carrots, given  …

This is a writing blog. Me, a writer, writing about what I’m learning about writing-related matters. Which kinds of books I like/don’t like and why; what I really think about semicolons…

Because we want to promote a national consumption of literature, we are creating a new kind of poetry-meme through our online zines. Contestants should send us their previously unpublished 12-line po...

What Would Shakespeare Do? by Fiona M. Jones

I am an Unreliable Narrator. If you’ve ever read or written stories, you’ll have met the Unreliable Narrator technique, wherein the author knows what’s happening and the character…

A flash fiction website for writers and readers. One 75 word tale published daily. Plus author interviews and writing group map

I’m feeling vaguely ashamed again, and as usual I don’t quite know why. I think I must have overstepped a subtle social barrier, plunged myself into the usual minority of one. Here’s what...

Unfortunately I’m not teaching today, so I won’t get to April-fool the young and not-quite-innocent. I’m at home on my sofa, or thereabouts, nursing a broken collarbone—a seatbelt injury from a car…

What do you do when your children ask too many questions? Maybe it’s natural curiosity; maybe it’s for a school project; maybe they’re concerned about something they’ve heard, and they’re...

Once upon a very, very long time ago, people read the works of Milton, Longlace, Donne et al, and decided to try writing poetry too. Anyone with any pretensions to a stylish education could dabble …

I’m looking back to when I had babies, thinking of the things I wasn’t prepared for. The sheer weight of responsibility, knowing that what you do and don’t do makes a real and lifelong...

What do you do when something ought to be a word but isn’t yet? You’re typing in something you’ve written, and a little red line appears under it. You’re supposed to humbly …

We need to talk about moss. We need to talk about all things green, everything that terraforms the planet, tames the rage of wind and water, gathers carbon out of air and feeds the biosphere. We have....

By Fiona M. Jones Whose woods these are I think I know, or at least whose woods these were, but the river flowing down below cares not whose land is whose, not yet whose trees are these and whose are...

Name a dinosaur. Any dinosaur. Why does nearly everyone say Tyrannosaurus Rex? Why does he get all the attention? What’s he ever done for us apart from stomping around very, very heavily and...

by Fiona M. Jones “Damien.” It was the Enemy. “What—” Damien dodged away, throwing chairs to slow the Enemy’s advance. He needed to level up, exchange the bread knife in his jacket for a machete. He h...

I’m not saying I hate being a teacher, but there are some things I really, really hate teaching. And one of them is The Writing Lesson. Yes, that’s right: I’m a literary writer, and I dread...

by Fiona M JonesI’ll always remember 2023 as the year when the manure hit the rotating blades with regard to AI-generated content.For the first time, AI chatbots showed that they c

"Half a dozen “authors” of AI-generated material could flood the self-publishing markets in a matter of weeks..."

"I don't believe in calories," I said. I could sense the annoyance around me: I had said something heretical, something that invalidated the hallowed belief that health and fitness is all about juggli...