Early in February 2026, I saw a post on Instagram and stopped scrolling. It was a story contest -- indie writers, a shared premise, an anthology as the prize. The brief gave me pause.
The brief
Write a short story based on this premise:
An app tells you when people are thinking about you, and whether those thoughts come from love or fear. What does your signal reveal?
It was perhaps not my thing. Contemporary technology, social anxiety, the modern condition. None of that is where I live as a writer. But I found myself turning the premise over and looking at it from the other side.
Instead of writing about an app, I wrote a tense gothic tale -- Beatrice and the Thing Called App -- about a ghost, or APParition, named App, who told Beatrice things that politely Victorian society would rather she didn't know. The word was the hinge. The story turned on it.
Mine was the first submission received. As the contest gathered momentum it became clear that many writers had entered. I didn't expect to be selected -- I had veered so far from the brief that selection felt unlikely. But I was chosen, and received special praise from the editor. The anthology publishes on Amazon on May 31st, 2026.
A thank-you to the editors · Instagram