The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Adan Berkowitz’s story “Calm Folk, Come Forth” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 4 May 2018. The story originally began as an old idea I had kicking around about “The Lazarus People,” which was about the rise of a technologically advanced people who augmented themselves to live forever. I couldn’t think of anything especially interesting to do with the concept, so I stuck it away in the back of my mind. Later, I had a …
Tim McDaniel’s story “Koehl’s Quality Impressions” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 27 April 2018. Ghosts are a fascinating topic. I can’t say I believe in them, and yet there is a smudge of doubt; some of the stories are not easy to dismiss. But if ghosts really do exist, what could they be? The idea that they are conscious entities seems nightmarish and unfair to me – can you imagine wandering around an old …
Sandi Leibowitz’s story “The Cypress and the Rose” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 20 April 2018. I envisioned this as a feminist re-telling of a certain familiar fairy tale, but I didn’t want that to be apparent early on. The hero’s name that came to me was Cyprus, who was a boy. Then I changed it to Cypress, and the tree and plant imagery came to me. That sounded like a girl’s name, so …
M. C. Tuggle’s story “Cathedra” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 13 April 2018. “Cathedra” is a “hard-science” story, inspired by an article in Astronomy magazine on Enceladus, the most promising site for life in our solar system. It’s a tale of faith and one’s discovery of purpose within society. The title and theme came from this anecdote: A man came upon a construction site where three people were working. He asked the first, “What …
Hamilton Perez’s story “Bye Bye Skinny Cow” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 6 April 2018. The title came first, though it wasn’t so much a title as a lament. I’d recently lost my dog, Jack (affectionately referred to as “skinny cow”) to a brain tumor, an experience completely alien to me despite growing up with all kinds of animals and having, on occasion, to say goodbye to them. But I’d never seen a seizure …
K. D. Azariah-Kribbs ’s story “The Three Sisters” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 30 March 2018. With some stories, I can remember where I was standing when I got the idea. “The Three Sisters” didn’t come to me quite so immediately, but seemed to slowly crystallize out of what I have learned from life with my wife and daughters, and about how difficult you can make things for yourself when you worry that you …
