The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Matt Hornsby’s story “A Final Resting Place” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 20 September 2019. This story came together from a couple of different ideas I had. I remember reading ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman around the time of a train journey I took across Hungary and Romania, and looking out the window at the landscape – already much wilder than anything in the UK – and imagining it returned to nature …
Peter T. Donahue’s story “Favorites from Here and Abroad” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 13 September 2019. I wanted to write a piece of speculative fiction that drew from my classroom philosophy. As a writing teacher, I operate on the assumption that reality is socially constructed. Whether or not this is true, the stance helps me to create more effective writing assignments and give more effective feedback. So, I wondered, in the future, would …
B. Morris Allen’s story “Some Sun and Delilah” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 6 September 2019. I wanted to write a story in the style of Richard Cowper (John Murry), and was specifically inspired by his novelette “Incident at Huacaloc”, about a couple who visit an old temple with troubling results. I stole those elements and some of the feel of the story, though the rest is quite different. I don’t remember now whether …
Evan James Sheldon’s story “There is a City, He Told Me” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 30 August 2019. I wrote, “There is a City, He told me,” after reading Calvino’s Invisible Cities. In that short novel, Marco Polo describes the Kahn’s empire to him through a series of flash-length sections. Reading, you come to realize that Marco Polo is actually talking about something else, and in the end (Spoilers!) a descent into hell. …
Simone Kern’s story “The Propagator” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 23 August 2019. I live near the Houston ship channel, the chemical refinery capital of America, so both the causes and effects of climate change are right at our doorstep. Summers are brutally hot, and the city (and our house) floods regularly. In March of 2019 we had a major industrial accident, the ITC plant fire, which put a black cloud of poisonous smoke …
Dawn Lloyd’s story “The Last Duty” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 16 August 2019. I wrote this story when I was teaching at the American University of Afghanistan. When I first moved to Kabul, I was fortunate that a guard at the bombed out Darul Aman Palace accepted a “tip” to let a group of us inside. I remember one particular guard who followed us around whistling and watching to make sure we didn’t …
