The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Beston Barnett’s story “Velaya, the Dreaming City” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 16 March 2018. “Velaya” was very much inspired by Lord Dunsany, who was a writer of quirky little fantasies in the pre-Tolkien era. I had been fooling around with different voices and styles in my writing, and thought Dunsany’s high, Biblical language would be interesting to mimic. Of course, what you set out to do is never quite what you do do,…
Dimitra Nikolaidou’s story “Any Old Disease” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 9 March 2018. A woman on a mountaintop looking up at the bright, crisp stars. Melted ice, sweeping the world away. A post-apocalyptic game, where you rediscover Earth’s unbelievable past. Stories come from the weirdest places. For a story that deals with death, hope and our human lust for achieving ever more, “Any Old Disease” has decidedly pulp origins. I have never seen…
David A. Gray’s story “Hishi” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 23 February 2018. “Hishi” came from a bunch of directions at once. I was worrying about my daughter and the world I’m raising her in, where rich old white men seem intent on burning it all down and ensuring she has no rights. And where we as a species seem to be sending our kids to war, or to bomb and kill. So I…
Mark David Adam’s story “Hold This Star for Me” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 16 February 2018. “Hold This Star For Me” started as an exploration of the idea of lost memory. My first draft began with a page and a half of the main character obsessed with the idea of repressed memory, feeling he’d had experiences in childhood he couldn’t recall. After the story was finished, I realized this musing about the possibility…
David Gallay’s story “Cheminagium” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 9 February 2018. This story began with the image of a two men standing before a gate in the mountains. At their feet was a body, crumpled in the snow. I knew the two men were brothers. The body remained a mystery until I heard someone define “cheminage” on the radio, as an old word for a toll to pass through the forest. That’s exactly…
David Z. Morris’s story “Love in its Heart” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 2 February 2018. This story was inspired directly by a real cat named Nebula. My wife badly wanted a cat, but this one was practically demonic – the incidents of accidental mutilation in the story, but also the sense of deep attachment to something dangerous – came from Nebula. She disappeared when we briefly left a window open on a hot…
