cover art "Unsuitable Substitute" by Josh George Our Mission: SmokeLong Quarterly is dedicated to bringing the best flash fiction to the web on a quarterly basis, whether written by widely published authors, or those new to the craft. The term "smoke-long" comes from the Chinese, who noted that reading a piece of flash takes about the same length of time as smoking a cigarette. All the work we publish is precisely that—about a smoke long. Issue Thirty-Eight Letter From the Editor Chuck Augello Call Me Your Unbroken Andrea Danowski Slow Dance Amy Denham Moms' Advice Gary Fincke Crushed Ice Faith Gardner Second Runner-Up Nick Harmon The Fear of Something Happening Annie Hartnett Christopher Anderson Holderness Messing with Texas Naira Kuzmich Exercise in Translation Helen McClory Boy Cyclops Mark O'Neil We Were Always Laughing Patty Petelin The Speed of the Sound Brenda Peynado The Earth Drowns Us Angela Readman Shit To Do with a Wedding Dress Amy Scharmann The Invitation Linda Simoni-Wastila The Abridged Biography of an American Sniper Matthew Smart Dark Times Laurie Saurborn Young Parameters of a Kingdom Interested in subscribing to SmokeLong's weekly newsletter? Click here. An email should be created. Send it as is, and you'll be subscribed. If the link does not work for you, send an email to imailsrv@smokelong.com with Subscribe slq-info in the body of the email (no subject is necessary). You'll receive updates detailing the release of new issues, new reading periods, contests, etc. We do not make our mail list available to anyone else.