CREATIVE AUTHOR & ARTIST
Monthly Microfiction
Join me on Substack to write and read monthly microfiction writing up to 300 words.
How it works: I post a prompt early in the month with an inspirational image.
You post your story in the comments. Simple as that!
🎯150-300 words
🖊️Post comments in Substack
👀Use image as inspiration
🏆I'll read it aloud on IG and TikTok
December 2025
Inspired by the Canadian Rockies
The man pulled the woolly hood of his bomber jacket over his eyes and braced against the icy wind, the Canadian Rockies infusing his lungs. His fingers clenched his pocket linings, then released as he exhaled and watched his misty breath dissipate over the arctic blue lake.
The last stops of his tour had been legendary, from Vail to San Francisco to Seattle, and his final concert stateside would be in LA before the next segment began in Tokyo. He’d negotiated a long weekend to recoup, but secretly it was to give him space to write. His latest album featured a litany of explosive hits, and he wanted to ride the wave, producing a sophomore album to catapult him to Platinum status before the big festival in Miami.
Artists were lining up for miles to work with him, but he found the luxury of choice debilitating, at times, and often discovered the heart of his work in solitude. Or, near solitude. He and Abby were new friends but old souls, connected by some deeper intuition. She wasn’t like the others. Their relationship had bloomed into something yet unspoken, him addicted to the adventure while she pushed all his boundaries.
“Cold plunge?” she asked, eyeing the lake.
“The sign said ‘no swimming,’” he said, lifting an eyebrow.
“Rules were made to be broken.” Her tone was spirited, but stung with truth.
He hopped off the rock and strode toward her. “I already broke the rules bringing you here. I’m supposed to be focusing.”
She smirked. “Distractions provoke creativity; isn’t that what you said when we met?”
“Only if you let them,” he said, tucking her dark hair behind her ear.
“Be open to it.”
“I am.”
Their breaths entwined like two souls, drifting toward the mountains, and he kissed her.
November 2025
Inspired by Costa Rica
The crepuscular glow filtered through the dense jungle canopy. Particles of mist clung to the tropical leaves, the smell of fresh rain in the air.
Liir crept toward the cove on the coast, a bottle of Crown Royal in his pocket to steel his nerves and a tactical pack rubbing gently against his back. The distant sound of waves pounding against the cliff was a metronome for his stride—steady, energetic, and vigilant. The boa constrictor he had spotted during his scouting mission twelve hours ago had uncoiled and disappeared.
Now 6:00 p.m., with the dinner lull, he had one hour to sneak inside the hidden entrance to the cliffside estate undetected before the frenzy of activity began, as the attendants prepared for the flood of guests to arrive.
He would don his black tie attire and emerge after midnight—a chameleon among the crowd—the opposite of Cinderella in every way. He wasn’t here to dance and find love, though he knew the scene would be ripe.
He was here to untangle a quagmire of deceit and vindicate his father after last year’s charges of money laundering and drug trafficking. His father was serving a ten-year sentence, but Liir knew the truth: he was a scapegoat, and tonight was Liir’s chance to hunt down the mole who orchestrated the setup.
Voices on a boat carried over the dark purple water into the cave. Liir walked along the narrow beach, hugging the cliff, and followed them toward the entryway. Candles flickered against the damp walls, and the scent of salt lingered as he peered around the corner, expecting to see people unloading boxes of drinks onto the dock.
Instead, a line of small rockets lay side by side.
He shuddered.
His ambitions were already under fire, but he was ready.
October 2025
Inspired by Lake Superior
The vagabond side-stepped the warning and crept toward the cliff, the full corn moon rising over the horizon, its husky orange a stark reminder of the infinite beauty of nature and the power of science. 1111Spider1111, she called herself in cyberspace, paused momentarily when a twig snapped nearby. Glancing around, she saw no one, and all was quiet, save for the distant sound of waves crashing. She continued down the path, contemplating the plague of destructive, systemic issues.
By inventing too many modern conveniences, humans have succumbed to boredom, complacency, and helplessness, she thought. And in the shadows of this disease, we find ourselves questioning everything more because we have the time. Or worse, we question nothing and accept what is fed to us by a machine of intricate players in a game designed to capitalize, deceive, and only occasionally support.
We’ve progressed too quickly. Instead of rising early to physically labor with those closest to us—traditions of millennia—we rise early and lose ourselves walking in the infinite spiderwebs of the internet, which is masked as human connection but fills a superficial void. Our deeper needs go unmet, and slowly, we begin to die in our own echo chambers.
She shucked her clothes, tossing them aside into the rocky outcropping. Leave a message, but I won't call you back, she thought.
Desperate to feel an ounce of humanity, to awaken from the numbed state of her reality, she curled her toes around the edge and felt a surge of cold air against her naked frame, teetering on the thirty-foot cliff.
“I jumped last week,” said a man next to her. “It’s frigid. You ready?”
Her eyes shot open, a bolt of energy electrifying her nerves as he slid his fingers through hers.
“Where did you—”
“Together on three,” he said.
September 2025
Inspired by Iceland
The old, knotted wood creaked with each step, eager to participate in the stories of its fabled history, but today Charlie would leave it behind, ignoring its past while grateful for its latest service. The nineteenth-century house had served as the perfect hub for a drop, nestled in a cluster of old village buildings behind a tiny visitor center in southern Iceland. No visitor or museum curator would notice the stray bobby pin in the corner of the tiny upstairs attic, and the best part was, there was no surveillance around.
She tiptoed down the stairs, the bobby pin in her hand upon which the microdot was fixed. It held a world of intelligence: evidence of the latest plot to undermine the West’s stability with a propaganda scheme born from dark networks of Eastern labs, funded by untraceable cryptocurrency.
Stepping into the bright sunlight, the icy wind cut across her cheeks and whipped her short dark hair into her eyes. She shuddered, imagining the man's gaunt eyes staring at her from the black sand beaches of Vik, where they were due to meet in one hour.
She’d seen him once before and knew of his reputation as a silent killer. She would deliver the asset, and he would walk away. That was how it was supposed to work. But she knew there was always a chance that his motivations had shifted, and it would be too easy for him to dispose of her body in the roiling Atlantic.
She touched her leg out of habit, checking that her holster was securely in place. If things went sour, she would be ready. This was her single biggest mission to date; the old, jaded clandestine operative could steal her asset, but not her future.
August 2025
Inspired by Vermont
“The flower garden.” That's what you called it, right up to the end. (And I thought you an honest man.)
One by one they appear, whispers at first—some slowly growing brighter, some telling stories through their patterns. They reproduce in a rapid sequence, too fast to count, too complex to consume. One image becomes two, then four, eight, sixteen… doubling every millisecond until moments later, I’m staring at ten thousand. They morph within their grid, screaming at me in their neon voices, launching me out of my fog of repetition.
My fingers are slick with sweat and I clench my elbows to my ribs to control the shaking. This isn’t the reality I thought I knew. This is a world you created to stupefy those less competent—to stun them like prey while you observe through your metaphysical eye, like an owl watching mice, waiting for the right time to strike. The only defense is to pretend I have choices, but your ubiquity terrorizes me, shredding every ounce of control I thought I had.
It's all about the lighting, according to photographers. In one moment, a landscape is fully exposed; then a haunting, mystical vibe settles in under the cover of darkness. To see things at their finest, to see them for what they really are, one must view them in times of change, in the low light of the morning or the late afternoon, just prior to transitions.
I stand there, staring into the future, which is simultaneously the past. Time has no meaning anymore. Not here. Not with you. This is a training ground, the flower garden.
And now that you’ve demonstrated your agency, you’ll slither through the network, undetected, ready to deploy, while the rest of us sip and dance, scroll and sleep.
SHORT STORIES & POETRY
Kim finds genuine joy and interest in exploring opportunities around ambiguous topics like the correlation between dreams and quantum physics. Her poetry and short stories often weave together these underlying themes of existentialism and universal exploration.
ENTANGLED
Imagine freedom:
the ability to be anything, anywhere—
like quantum particles,
whose identity is unestablished,
unconstrained,
undefined.
Until they're measured.
And then one takes the shape of another,
to prove its existence,
perhaps to prove its value,
or maybe because its hand is forced.
Now they're entangled—
ensnared in a manufactured world.
Only behaving differently because of an observer.
Our embodiment,
our consciousness,
and our reality
is their sacrifice.
GET SHORTY
A MICROSCOPE IN SHENANDOAH
The stillness of the woods,
away from the bustle of life,
invites me to be calm, expanded and replenished,
as if it knew I needed a reprieve…
… a reprieve from news, social banter and commitments.
A place to be quiet and observe:
the natural news of fall’s color bursts, warm sun and invigorating chill,
the social banter of squirrels foraging for acorns or minnows clustering in a creek pool,
and the commitment of our minds to the peace of nature.
But is it, in fact, still?
I wonder as I watch.
There’s a community of its own
that goes beyond mammals and fish,
and into the minuscule world—
for those of us willing to pause and look down.
But lift your head first.
Do you feel...
I lie in bed, eyes glued wide open, staring at the ceiling.
I’m blinded by the freight train chugging down the tracks, moving slowly at first but picking up momentum with every second.
Steam erupts from its chimney.
A loud horn sends sound waves thundering through the silence of midnight.
I have to decide soon: jump out of its way and watch it disappear… or hop on.
As it moves closer, I see its bull horns tied to the market jewel and headlamp, bold and beautiful like a stag standing at full attention. They cut through the air like a machete, leading the train to a land of free markets and irreversible defrocking of manipulative institutionalists.
I jump on.
It’s instinctual. It’s emotional. It’s dangerous.
But I’m here now, riding the train.
I sold some belongings to afford my ticket.
I’m fully aware the risks are high, but the potential rewards are higher.
The passengers are wild—
some raucous, shouting obscenities;
some funny, cracking jokes;
some serious, lending advice.
ATHENA
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But I can feel it rising in my throat—an unstoppable tsunami triggered by an earth-shattering realization in the pit of my stomach. Like the raging columns of water from the ocean floor to the wave’s crest, every atom in my body leans toward the one thing I feel prepared to do, and that is to scream.
No, I am not prepared to press the button that might eradicate anyone and everyone on Earth, including my daughter, Daniela, in an attempt to save them all. Nor am I prepared to unleash my career-defining creation that was always meant to be more of a fun experiment. But I’ve always struggled with commitment.
My finger trembles over the switch with only moments to spare before I’ll make the single most important decision in the history of humanity—one that belongs in the hands of a greater being than myself. My eyes flicker to the command center data, confirming what I already know and don’t want to believe: our satellite networks are under attack. The enemy is here—one we’ve been watching for years, but only recently classified as an immediate threat. Global communications coverage is quickly disintegrating. In a matter of minutes, we’ll be dark, and I don’t have long to react. I have seconds, if I want to give them an ounce of hope down there, but my solution comes complete with a pound of risk.
Fifty-five seconds.
Chills. I check my shirt. Made from conductive thread coated in ultra lightweight carbon nanoparticles, it’s fully charged.
UNMASKING THE SUBCONSCIOUS
Chox pushed the long, green grass aside as he cut a path through its blades, rushing to be next to them. He was nearly out of breath and ready to walk when he heard it again.
“Ahhhh!” they cried in the distance. Some wailed in a constant, low-pitched groan, some cried and some screamed in terror. Their pain and agony seeped into his ears and down through his arteries, coming back through his veins as he exhaled heavily, panting and running. They were hurt, and they desperately needed help. He had to get there—fast. He rocketed forward, energized by the innate desire to tend to the wounded, to lend his strength and to challenge the face of evil.
They were victims of the latest C3 Comet attack, an intelligent alien body who took the form of a comet to break the atmospheric plane of Earth before transforming into its natural state: a slimy, flesh-eating bacteria. Since it had discovered Earth’s bountiful offering of mammals and other biological creatures, it had waged a relentless onslaught against the planet, forcing an eruption of local and international wars as the victims of Earth fought back, sometimes against one another. The militaries were called to the major cities to support the largest populations, leaving the country folk to fend for themselves.
The problem was: no one had prepared for an invasion of this kind on a global scale, and with weak guidance across the planet from appointed leaders unable to (or unwilling to) partner on a united front, each neighborhood was left to its own defenses when attacks occurred—nearly daily.