The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Matthew Gomez’s story “Right Behind You” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 12 November 2021. I taught high school English for a number of years, and during that time I wrote a series of lessons based on a story in The Economist called “Fields of Tears.” The article describes the lengths migrant farm workers from Latin America go to in hopes of earning a better life for their families in the United States. Many of …
A.J. Cunder’s story “Treedom” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 5 November 2021. The concept for this piece emerged from my own struggles with “fitting in,” and finding acceptance as a member of the gay community. At first, Garold was meant to embody this transformation, while the children were mostly just observers—conduits between Garold and the town. But after a few rounds of edits, I realized (along with Morris) that the true heart of this …
Karl El-Koura’s story “The Azurian Shield” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 29 October 2021. Some time ago, an image popped into my head of a soldier on a horse in a field, facing a cracking dome from the inside. I was so excited by the idea that I started writing the story almost right away (often, though not always, a mistake). I wrote about a thousand words of the soldier trying to hold the …
Laurel Beckley’s story “Tell the Crows I’m Home” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 22 October 2021. I wrote the first draft of “Tell the Crows I’m Home” in March 2021, when the waves of hopelessness were crashing into me. I’m a bit of a late comer to all things, so the loneliness of the pandemic was only finally hitting—I had left a stressful, toxic workplace to take some time to write before we moved …
Lisa Short’s story “Genesis” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 15 October 2021. The crosstrainer (as opposed to the stationary bike or treadmill) has always been my cardio gym equipment of choice, and one day, as I was on it, I was thinking about cross-country skiing (which the crosstrainer somewhat mimics)—for whatever reason, I started imagining a woman, inside a vehicle that operated similarly to that, alone and traversing an icy plain at night. On …
J.C. Pillard’s story “The Tick of the Clock” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 8 October 2021. Like many of my stories, “The Tick of the Clock” started with an image: a young man speaking to an old woman, begging for her help. It was a compelling image, but I wasn’t sure what he needed help with, which really put a wrench in my plans to turn it into a story. The idea stewed in …
