The inspirations and origins for our stories.
B. Morris Allen’s story “A Conversion of Crows” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 1 September 2017. It may not be obvious at first glance, but “A Conversion of Crows” is a story about the rock group Whitesnake. Back in the days when they were good – no really, there was such a time – David Coverdale put out an album called White Snake, which included the song “Whitesnake”. It couldn’t have been any more …
Pauline Yates’s story “An Aftertaste of Earth” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 25 August 2017. “An Aftertaste of Earth” originally stemmed from the prompts, sci-fi, pumpkin pie and a convention centre, in a short story competition which earned me a place in the final round of the contest. As I love end-of-the-world themes, the story developed from wondering how people would be chosen to start a new colony on another planet, and what they …
Paul A. Hamilton’s story “Oven Game” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 18 August 2017. I originally wrote “Oven Game” as an unsolicited piece for a specific magazine with a certain quirky, dark aesthetic. I don’t usually write without any concepts or outlines at all, just stringing words together, but this story I just sat down at my kitchen table and tried to warp my imagination around something odd and a bit unsettling. Which probably …
Kimberly Kaufman’s story “What Have You Done to Be Happy Today?” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 11 August 2017. I was washing dishes and listening to an NPR piece on a pizza company in Silicon Valley that would soon be using robots to deliver their pizzas when I started to form the ideas that would become this story. Also mentioned in this article – and something that has been up for debate in some …
Karl Dandenell’s story “Papa Pedro’s Children” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 28 July 2017. “Papa Pedro’s Children” is one of those stories that took years to write. Literally. The situation came to me while I was sitting in a big, comfy rocking chair, giving my daughter a bottle. (She’s now in high school.) I wanted to explore the idea of a main character who was caring for a child that wasn’t his, so I …
Charlotte H. Lee’s story “HOPper” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 21 July 2017. I’d been wanting to write something about an AI for a while and I was tired of the unending cautionary tales about AI. I wanted to go with a positive, happy character with positive and optimistic themes. One night I read one of the Grimm fairytales and came across one of the stories about Brownies. Going adversarial felt too predictable so …
