New Story “Moonlight and Roses” (read for free)

It’s always nice to start a new year with a new published story!

Read my flash fiction tale Moonlight and Roses for free as part of the January issue of Abyss & Apex Magazine.

This tale is about clockwork toys that come to life in the moonlight. It’s not really my usual style. In fact, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever written, and that’s because it sprang to life from an oddly specific writing prompt in a contest.

For this contest, we were asked to write a flash story that combined two genres: clockpunk and romance. My first thought was, “Well, crap. I never write romance. I am soooo bad at romance. I’m toast!” My second thought was, “WTF is clockpunk?!” Forty-eight frenzied hours later, I had come up with this story, which won honorable mention in the contest. It owes a lot to Toy Story, I’m not gonna lie. I’ve watched Toy Story 1, 2, and 3 about a zillion times apiece with my kids, and I’ve always loved the idea of the toys having their own inner lives. Once I went down the rabbit hole of researching 18th-century clockwork automatons, the rest was history.

So: never say never, no matter how wacky a writing prompt may seem. Sometimes it’s exactly what you need to produce something that you never thought you had in you.