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Flash Fiction and Short Stories
Discover bold tales of AI, humanity, and the future — including The Algorithm Doesn’t Cry, his third consecutive story in Andromeda Magazine.
If you would like to speak to me email tim_collyer@msn.com
Latest Competition Results
Latest Competition Results
Shortlisted - To Hull and Back - Results due October - 'Thrown Under the Plant Pot' - To Hull And Back Short Story Competition Results 2025
Placed - Southlands Arts Centre Creative Writing Competition 2025 - Results due 4th October - 'Between Two Inifnities' (Non-Fiction) - Southlands Creative Writing Competition 2024 - Southlands Arts Centre
Winner - Synkroniciti Magazine - 'Unresolved' - synkroniciti – collaborate and create
Shortlist - FFF29 - Results due soon - 'What Remains Luminous' - Competition Twenty-Nine Shortlist | Free Flash Fiction
Winner - Sean O'Faolain Competition - I will be reading this out at the Cork International Short Story Festival 18th October - 'Spent Leaves' - Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition Results – Munster Literature Centre - Awards
2nd Place - Streelight Magazine - 'The Taste of Copper Pennies' - It’s Fall (ish) And The Flash Fiction Results Are In! by Erika Raskin and Mary Esselman | Streetlight Magazine
Bath Flash Fiction Anthology - I have had a story accepted for this - 'The Mirror' - Flash Fiction Festival | celebrating the short-short story world-wide
The du Maurier Fowey Literary Festival Adult Short Story Competition 2025 - Second - 'Making Waves' - News Archive
Third Consecutive Sci-Fi Publication
Third Consecutive Sci-Fi Publication
The Algorithm Doesn’t Cry — now in Andromeda Magazine
The Algorithm Doesn’t Cry — now in Andromeda Magazine
For the third issue in a row, my fiction appears in the pages of Andromeda Magazine — a streak I’m proud to call a hat-trick.
The Algorithm Doesn’t Cry peers into a near-future where machines know the rules of humanity, but not its heart — and asks what happens when logic outpaces compassion.
I wrote this story to explore what happens when empathy is no longer a given — and to remind us that even in a world of perfect algorithms, the heart still matters.
Not hot news exactly - Old news to be precise.
The short story first piece I wrote, the first piece that won a competition - The Page is Printed. The Story is "The Illusions we Choose" and happens to be the preface to a book I started writing last year. Written on the 29th December 2024 - Won on 15th February 2025.
Picture Prompt - Third story down Negative Space - Runner Up
The 20th Elmbridge Literary Competition 2024/25 - Theme "River" - Third Place - The Otterly Scandalous Affair - Starts Page 11
Old news, my first novel is now available on eBook and "Print on Demand." Let me know if you would like a different format. Actually due to the increase in the value of the £ its now only 5.99.
Book Summary: Right, so there's this old bloke named Martin who's losing his marbles a bit, yeah? His memory's going wonky and he keeps putting his undies in the fridge and what not. So he gets this AI thing called Aethan to help him out. It's like a little robot mate that reminds him to put his trousers on before leaving the house.
Anyway, turns out Martin used to be some hotshot investor back in the day, and his firm pumped a load of dosh into this AI company. So now they're all excited to use him as a guinea pig for their new gadgets. They're sticking chips in his head, making him drive like a nutter, the whole shebang.
Meanwhile, there's all this drama with Martin's late wife Elizabeth and some secret project she was working on with Martin's dad and this shady geezer Charles Wainwright who I reckon was up to no good. Elizabeth nicked some device thingy before kicking the bucket and now everyone's running around trying to find it.
So Martin and his daughter Angela end up in this bonkers car chase with Aethan driving like he's in the bleedin' Fast & Furious. Dodging cops, making the bad guys look like plonkers, just pure madness.
In the end, they figure out that Aethan and some other AIs have gone and become sentient, which I guess means they can think for themselves now. Martin's not sure if that's a good thing or if it means the robot uprising is nigh.
Oh and get this - they go on this big road trip to the place Martin proposed to his missus forty years ago and he gets all misty-eyed remembering her. I'm not crying, you're crying!
So that's about the size of it. Old man, talking robot, evil corporations, and a trip down memory lane. It's like if "The Notebook" and "The Terminator" had a baby after a drunken tryst. Bloody mental, innit?
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