The knight looked out over the rolling hills, hands on her knees and sword resting on the ground in front of her, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice. It was dark, with only the moon and the faint flickering firelight providing any visual on the surrounding area, but her eyes were sharp and well-accustomed to seeing in near pitch-black. The plains where they had made camp seemed to stretch endlessly, grass rippling...
Read moreby Savannah Jade Firm arms wrapped around my body as we lay atop a dark green crocheted blanket in the sand. Each grain molded to the contours of our figures, leaving imprints in the shape of mini sand dunes. Past his shoulder where my chin rested, my fingertips grazed the peak of the nearest dune, tracing the curvature of Earth’s natural occurring memory foam. The sand trickled down, forming a small waterfall that shimmered like...
Read moreby Meahgan Ferral In the dark of the woods, where sunbeams rarely kissed the ground and strangers never stepped, there was a small community, tucked away in the leaves and branches and dirt. I’ve lived my life there, in a cabin with my parents and sister. The two of us spent our childhood roaming beneath the trees with our parents at our heels, whispering in our ears to never wander too far, to never stray...
Read more
Science fiction allures and enthralls because of the unique worlds each story holds. At the core of science fiction, there’s science: some new knowledge, discovery, or breakthrough. Then, there’s technology: how that science is applied, from daily life to a planetary or (inter)galactic scale. When you hear “science,” your mind might jump to physics, biology, chemistry—all those hard sciences. But don’t discount the social sciences, like psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Blending together different sub-sciences leads Read more…
Romance is the genre that inspired me to write as a kid. It felt more welcoming and attainable, since I viewed it in an escapist light. I realized I didn’t have to take myself or my writing so seriously, but rather just try to write something fun, interesting and well-written. Another beauty of romance, no pun intended, is how central love is in our lives. Everyone wants to love and be loved in some sense Read more…
Our pulse quickens. Our eyes grow wide. We gasp for breath, shudder, and shrink back into our seats. Horror readers—and writers—are a true contradiction. As our favorite genre hurls us mercilessly into our deepest childhood frights, feeds us to monsters, and speeds us headlong into destruction and death, we’ve never felt more alive. What is it about wandering through words, away from the safety of the light, into the terrors of the darkness, through dizzy Read more…
Sitting amidst the woods with the golden glow of the sun, you watch satyrs run by with their flutes. Fairies zoom to join them. Well, except for one. She’s barely the size of your finger, but you still manage to see her smile beneath her wide eyes. The fairy offers a hand to you. Sound familiar? Fantasy is a genre known for bending reality in beautiful ways. Whether the world is based on our own, Read more…
In thrillers, good and evil are divided. Moral choices stay clear, though risks are high and calls are hard. For all the palpitation-inducing danger, for each acid spurt of adrenaline, what whiplashes protagonist and reader through each thriller’s plot is the knowledge that they have something worth saving. They are the ones who will fight for good. They are the ones who will face down evil. Mysteries can twist the reader’s perception with unreliable narrators, Read more…
I read all genres, but mysteries were there for me when the going was rough. During the hardest times in my life I engaged my overactive mind in high-stakes puzzles, in fictional webs of deceit, and in dropped clues and red herrings. Each mystery pointed out the truth: sometimes, life went sideways, the world went wrong, and people went wrong, too. I didn’t want to be gaslit into thinking everyone was safe. I knew that Read more…
Join The PopFic Collective for an online event: Friday, May 23rd at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern *****CLICK HERE TO RSVP***** As writers, we transcribe what haunts us, putting onto paper what may feel ephemeral yet persistent in our memories. However, in transcribing what haunts us, we are not simply passive conduits between an “actuality” of the past and paper. Writing, like the memories which make writing possible, is much more complex than that. This talk focuses Read more…
By Clarissa Janeen When the fairy prince fell through the portal to the mortal realm, he had been presiding over the high court, discussing what was to be done about the hobgoblins encroaching on pixie territory. This was highly embarrassing and irregular for a prince of the high court. One moment he was delegating a spy to seek out the extent of the invasion, the next he was in a circle of mushrooms in a Read more…
By Kenyon Geiger Before the internet, there was the office break room, the proverbial watercooler, the porch stoop, the cafeteria, the living room. In the fall of 1990, the question, “Who killed Laura Palmer?” echoed throughout these spaces. It was everywhere—festooned across t-shirts, used in the monologues of Johnny Carson, parodied in sitcoms. The mystery of Laura Palmer’s murder on the hit TV show Twin Peaks became an indelible part of the zeitgeist in the Read more…
By Paige Tokay I met a man in the Common once who told me that it rains like Vietnam in Boston. I see him from time to time at the Dunkin’ counter on days that I don’t mind spending a five on coffee. We have not swapped words or nods since, but he was nice—which can seem beautiful and rare most days. This is what I am thinking as the rain picks up. We are Read more…
By Ashdeep Kaur Stephen King is a household name—and with good reason. Known as the “King of Horror,” his corpus has brought deliciously thrilling tales of terror to decades of readers. King has thrown readers into a plethora of eerie settings from chilling pet cemeteries to haunted hotels through the rapidfire pace of his prose and his utter mastery over tension. In The Outsider, King transports readers to Flint City, Oklahoma where the body of Read more…