Occasionally, my writing group runs out of stories to critique, so we have a writing session instead. One time, another writer brought cards from a fairy tale story-telling game for us to use as story prompts. We all drew five cards, and my cards read:
- Garden
- Orphan
- Storm
- This Comes Alive
- Husband or Wife
- And when they died, they passed it on to their children.
Thus “Songs of Fish and Flowers” was born. Some of the imagery for it was already in my head, but I also think I was really lucky with those cards. As you can see, I followed them fairly faithfully.
If you enjoy “Songs of Fish and Flowers,” you may want to pick up the collection The Necromouser and Other Magical Cats with the coupon code JW97Y (before April 15th), and if you enjoy the whole collection please consider voting for it under Best Other Literary Work in the Ursa Major Awards. Voting is open through April 15th.