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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2025
Submitted to Contest #333
Title: Just a Dumb Apple.The conversation is always the same. The air filled with garlic, butter, pad thai, and the clatter of forks scraping porcelain. Whatever trendy place I’ve been invited to this time.I sit across the table glass still full, listening to friends or coworkers describe the best meal they’ve ever eaten. They pat their bellies and laugh — Paris dinners, roadside shacks, trendy bars with Edison bulbs.I don’t laugh. I force a smile, more line than curve. My best meal is too painful to share, but someone always asks. I stare a...
Submitted to Contest #332
Title: How Valkyries Are MadeHilde had abandoned the old gods—abandoned her oath—and now the storm came for her.Salt spray lashed her, but she didn’t flinch.She was already soaked; fear was the only thing she refused to wear.The longship lurched, hurled skyward by a wave, and her stomach twisted with it—sick as a dog that had fed on the dead.She gripped the rope as the wind bayed around her, thunder pounding like war-hooves across the clouds.The rope snapped.It ripped through her palms, flaying flesh. Hilde slammed against the deck as lightn...
Submitted to Contest #331
EDIT: There's hints of violence and fighting. Erin pulled her goose-down coat tighter as the cold bit into her. When she’d first moved to Hokkaido, winter had felt like a personal attack—wind needling through every gap, snow piling up faster than she could shovel. She’d only planned to stay a year, teach English in Sapporo, go back to Toronto, and attend law school.That was before Yuki.He’d found her half-lost after a ski trip, shivering at the wrong bus stop in the dark, and guided her back to town—then somehow, smoothly, left with her num...
Submitted to Contest #330
Thirteen weeks.That’s what I kept telling myself as I stood on the yellow footprints, my legs still shaking from scrambling off the bus. I swear I can still hear the drill instructor screaming GET OFF MY BUS! like a broken siren on repeat.The footprints were thick yellow paint, chipped at the edges—the kind used to mark roads. They forced your feet into position. The fear forced the rest of you.I glanced at the man next to me—short, curly hair, wide eyes. He glanced back. That was all we needed: neither of us had any idea what was coming.A d...
Submitted to Contest #328
The marble pillars of the great hall shook and cracked again as the sixth seal broke. Marcel le Malchanceux and Chengyun, Dragon of the Mist, quickened their pace toward the Chamber of Seals. Marcel could feel the Halls of the Gods unbinding as they ran.“You have to stop her!” Chengyun’s voice shook like a river being dammed.“ME?!” Marcel shot him a look. “What do you expect me to do? You’re a dragon!” His fingers twitched uncontrollably.“Of a small river! You’re the god of—”The hall shook again. Marcel stared, wide-eyed, as Chengyun leaked ...
Submitted to Contest #326
Disclaimer: Violence and ethically difficult choices in a historical fantasy setting. The beast’s clawed hand twisted upward, gnarled fingers reaching for him. Kazimir Czarny’s lance slammed into its shoulder, splintering as the creature clawed at the tip. He laughed—dark, cruel—and released the broken shaft, riding on. The profane thing, twisted by the Ashkaran Alchemists’ sorcery, shrieked, a sound between starving man and dying ox, reeking of rot and hunger.The hussars behind him drove their lances home, and the beast gave a final gurglin...
Submitted to Contest #325
Dorothea—Dotty to her friends—sat hunched over a scarred desk, a relic from when the Grand Duchy of Bathiva still had a monarch, when a slow, icy breeze rippled across her skin. She straightened with a groan from her swivel chair. The chair wasn’t the only thing groaning; the forgotten letters, parcels, and cards lining the walls of the Dead Letter Department stirred and sighed as if in sympathy. All had died or hatched prematurely before delivery. Dead, perhaps—but the words inside them still gave them a restless sort of power.There was nev...
Submitted to Contest #321
CW: Sexual content and threat of harm The sharp click of Reese’s heels split the bar’s chatter like a rifle crack—first step fired, second step chambered. What froze the room was the blue mini cocktail dress riding high on freshly shaved thighs. Three-and-a-half-inch stilettos—anything less wasn’t even trying. Every step announced what his grin confirmed: tonight, he was the baddest bitch this dive would ever see. He spotted Chelsea and strutted toward her, hips swaying with calculated arrogance, daring anyone to really take him in—the lean,...
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