RPLA SHOWCASE: Joan North

Unpublished Flash Fiction

What’s Wrong with Mike?

Joan North

At the 2017 Royal Palm Literary Award Banquet, author Joan North won First Place for her flash fiction story:  What’s Wrong with Mike?. Each year at the RPLA Banquet, authors experience the joy of earning accolades for all the hard work that is often done in the privacy of the home with little to no recognition. We’re showcasing the best of the best with our First Place winners spotlight. Not only does RPLA recognize extraordinary talent, but we’re giving readers an opportunity to sample excerpts from the winning stories. What’s Wrong with Mike? Mike’s young mind is easily confused and overwhelmed as his imagination runs wild.

Joan North lived on ashrams in California and Massachusetts and a Zen center in Hawaii for eighteen years. She currently lives in St. Augustine, Florida.

Click here to read What’s Wrong with Mike?

An interview with Joan North

Q: Where do you get your story ideas?

A: My stories originate mostly from meaningful highs and lows in my life. I think we share more similarities than differences, so by writing what I know, I hope to touch others like me. I want readers to take chances and venture under the surface into deep feelings while maintaining stability through human and divine relationships. Abigail Thomas wrote, “Be honest, dig deep, or don’t bother.” I agree. And since dealing with love and fear are our major conflicts, I just elaborate on them with what-ifs.

Q: Anything in particular about your award-winning RPLA entry that you’d like to share?

A: I’ve been a child, I’ve raised a child, and I’ve worked with troubled children as a social worker. It wasn’t hard to enter the mind of a troubled five-year-old in What’s Wrong with Mike? I kept wanting to hug him and assure him everything would be all right.

Q: Who do you credit with inspiring your writing?

A: Stephen King, Elizabeth Strout, and Margaret Atwood. From their first sentences, they hold my attention gently and firmly in fiction that seems more intense than reality. Their characters are so human and multileveled and imperfect. I love that.