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 was inspired to write a tense gothic tale - Beatrice and the Thing Called App - about a ghost, or APParition if you like, named App, who told Beatrice things that polite Victorian society would rather she didn't know.
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 because 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 will be published on Amazon on May 31st, 2026.
A thank-you to the editors · Instagram
ARC Award · Most Imaginative Use of PING
