The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Katrina Smith’s story “Somewhere to be Going” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 3 May 2019. I have an obsession with birds who leave their young to be fostered by different species, and I have a fifteen year old son. Over the years, he’s given me motivation when I’ve needed it and been my biggest fan. I’ve written him a short story for his birthday nearly every year since he learned to read. Sometimes these …
Luke Murphy’s story “A Sacrifice for the Queen” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 26 April 2019. I wanted to submit a story to an anthology on the theme of alien invasions. I had a spark of an idea: I was intrigued by how, in the ancient world, a city might have its own deity. Athena, for example, was the goddess of Athens. I asked myself what that would look like in the modern world. …
Frances Pauli’s story “With Eyes Half Open” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 19 April 2019. “With Eyes Half Open” is the result of a writing prompt featuring circus-themed stories. I began with a young girl searching for magic, but as soon as Miranda walked through that gate, she was skeptical. The illusion of the lights and colors, the showiness and the theatrics did not impress her. I had to find something deeper, darker to …
Daniel Roy’s story “Forever and a Life” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 12 April 2019. One of the paradoxes of aging is that the less life we have left ahead of us, the more we obsess about extending this time. Death-defying acts of rebellion have almost always been led by the young, after all. It led to me wonder: how fearful of death could someone be if they could theoretically live forever? What would …
Sarah McGill’s story “A Yellow Landscape” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 5 April 2019. I wrote “A Yellow Landscape” after reading Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, which is a series of gorgeous essays on physical space in poetry. I was caught by his descriptions of a house as a very physical and yet deeply symbolic shell around the self. The protagonist of “A Yellow Landscape” moves around a house that is not her …
Evan Marcroft’s story “The Color of My Home is Red Like an Apple” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 29 March 2019. This story emerged from a lifelong grappling with the fundamental hurdle that I perceived in the concept of religion. I was never one to put faith in any process that could not be studied directly, and so I was somewhat puzzled by those in my life who held up the laws of their …
