The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Sabrina N. Balmick’s story “La Belle Dame” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 4 March 2016. I wrote the first draft of “La Belle Dame” one summer after reading the Keats poem. I’d read it several times before, but this time it struck me differently. Maybe it was because I’d read it with a writer’s eyes for the first time; maybe I’m just a sucker for tragic romances. I liked that the ending was open …
K. G. Anderson’s story “Rowboat” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 12 February 2016. I’ve often wanted to rewrite parts of my own life story, so it was natural that I’d write fiction about a character who attempts it. Fiction is filled with characters who reinvent themselves. This used to be true in real life, as well — people who emerged from war zones, or who turned up on the frontier, where no one could …
Elise Forier Edie’s story “Heard” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 5 February 2016. “Heard” began as an experiment in trying to write shorter fiction. I tend to write long pieces, and it’s really a challenge for me to keep things in the 3,500-word range. For “Heard,” I set the super tight goal of about 1,000 words, and it was very tough going, for quite some time. I kept wanting to delve deeply into character …
Henry Szabranski’s story “In the Belly of the Angel” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 29 January 2016. I’m a visual thinker. The inspiration for “In the Belly of the Angel” came from a single, sudden, unbidden image: of a large orangutan-like ape, squatting atop a pile of human bones, its wispy hair stirred by a strong breeze as it contemplated an opening in the floor of a vast, bird-filled chamber floating far above the …
Rhoads Brazos’s story “… and now He erases” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 15 January 2016. With “and now He erases . . .” I was striving for the ultimate apocalypse, one in which the whole world quite literally crumbles away. It turned out to be a rather bittersweet tale, though still amusing in small parts. The aforementioned “He” is never named, and his demise isn’t explained. The main character, clearly Evel Knievel, isn’t …
Mari Ness’s story “Cat Play” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 8 January 2016. I don’t really remember much about the actual writing of this story, but I suspect that I wrote it in part because although one of the cats that I live with seems convinced that I too am a cat, just a rather overlarge and clumsy one. (The other cat is well aware that I am a deeply inferior creature who can …
