It takes a con to know a con. Or possibly, it takes a woman meeting a con to figure out she’s married to a con. This is my entry for Margaret Atwood’s Freeze-Dried Fiction Contest. Take a look at Atwood’s story, THE FREEZE-DRIED GROOM, on which this story is based and then come back to mine. Thanks for reading!

She feels everything you do. Your touch is her solace... or her greatest nightmare. In an isolated village deep within the jungle, Hestia lives the life of a pariah. She has the rare ability to skin crawl, feeling on her own skin the touch those nearby give to each other. When heavy rain floods the river and people begin to fall ill, the villagers' desperation turns to wrath and this wrath turns its misguided eye upon the village's most hated daughter. There is one way a skin crawler like Hestia can best be tortured. Unfortunately for her, the villagers have figured out what it is.

I freeze. I burn. I have a vigil to attend... My second entry to Hulu's #MyHandmaidsTale contest.

WINNER of Margaret Atwood's 'Dear 2114' #FutureLibrary Contest! I attempt to answer the prompt: Write a story about the advice you would give the world in 2114. Listen very closely, future people. Or not. Your choice. (Cover designed by Amber K Bryant. Cover image and chapter image have no known copyright restrictions).

In Fillory, the air you breathe will either give you the power of gods, or choke the life out of you... An entry for the #BattleTheBeast contest promoting season two of THE MAGICIANS on the SyFy channel. This story's characters belong to the world of The Magicians. If you haven't read the books or watched the show, be aware that there are spoilers below. There have been 40 time loops created to destroy the Beast, a force of immense evil residing within Fillory. Season one of The Magicians deals with the 40th loop. This short piece was written with the following prompt in mind: create a story exploring one of the first 39 loops. Towards the end of season one, there is a scene taking place in Ember's abode in which Julia and Quentin are both present. Ember expresses surprise at seeing Julia. As it turns out, in most of the previous loops, Quentin had usually killed her by now. Our heroes shift uncomfortably at this revelation, which seems intended as a bit of dark humor. I haven't been able to stop thinking about this. I wrote another story for this contest working in an entirely different vein of thought, but still Ember's declaration stuck in my head. Why would Quentin, of all people, kill Julia? If you're a fan of the show, you know that when Dean Fogg tells Quentin and Julia they are reliving a timeline, it's also revealed that this 40th loop is the first in which Julia was not accepted to Brakebills. The hope was that the inner struggle resulting from her feelings of rejection would make her stronger. Stronger than what, I wondered. What occurred for Fogg to feel she needed greater strength? I took Dean Fogg's and Ember's words as hints of what may have happened in one of the other loops and ran with it. I hope you enjoy the resulting story!

Winner of Michelle Jo Quinn's Just Pitch It contest and a featured story in the Hearts on Sleeves Valentine's Anthology. Romance was so 2010! Ever since her husband left, Josie prefers to think of Valentine's Day as a kid's holiday and nothing more. Finally happy on her own, she's perfectly content to spend the day doling out heart-shaped cookies at her son's preschool. When she learns she'll be paired with another parent during the school party, a candy shop owner named Brook, Josie figures she'll spend the time chatting about life as working mothers. Much to her surprise, working mother Brook is actually hot, single dad Brook. Could this holiday hold promise of something sweet for Josie after all?

A finalist for Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last Contest. "Retribution isn't pretty. But it is immensely satisfying." Lucy has known ever since she was a young girl that she was born with an expiration date. It's a fate that, according to her mother, no woman can avoid. Haunted by her mother's dire warnings, she makes her way in a world she believes will turn on her as soon as the bloom is off the rose. But unlike her mother, Lucy is ready to face this certain betrayal dead on. She's going to have one hell of an expiration date.

❝A drabble is an extremely short work of fiction of exactly one hundred words in length, not necessarily including the title. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in an extremely confined space.❞ ─wikipedia

***WINNER of the "BREATHTAKING: A FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION!" "You are a secret kept from the world, but not from me." So begins the peculiar message found slipped under a bedroom door on the morning of May first. Theo is the heir to a powerful dictatorship. The number of people allowed to know he exists is few. He has spent his entire life walled up in the Tower, the looming stone monolith from which his father rules over the Land. Merryn is the daughter of political prisoners. She's known who Theo is longer than he would think possible, and she is taking a great risk contacting him via handwritten notes in order to convince him he deserves more than the fate his father has designed for him. She has one month to exchange daily messages with him, to answer his questions and open his eyes to the realities of a world he has never been allowed to see. A revolution is coming to the Land at the end of the month, and if Merryn's notes fail to get their point across, Theo may never live to see the sunrise on June first. A/N: The following letters were originally published each day from May 1st-31st, 2014. As you will see,Theo is allowed to write down a question for Merryn each evening, but you, the reader, won't see these within the body of the story. It may or may not be obvious from Merryn's response what Theo is asking. Part of the fun is guessing what his questions might be, but if you really want to know what they are, a list of those questions is at the end of the story. This story is a re-imagining of Rapunzel. Now, without further ado-I believe a young heir is about to unfold a slip of paper found on the tile floor near his door... Let's see what it says!

The bones of this story are true.