‘Ultra Phenom’ came to me in a flash. I was riding in a truck and passed by the window of a thrift store that had old TVs playing in their storefront window. Some teenage kids were standing on the sidewalk looking at the TVs. I grabbed a pencil and a notebook I keep in the side door of the truck and started writing. I never stopped to think about what I was writing and when I looked up the whole story was written. There wasn’t a lot of editing to do but there was a bit that wasn’t making sense, so I sent it to a teenager to look over and she gave me great feedback. I made a few changes and the story was ready. This one came out more as stream of consciousness writing. I can never tell when a story like this is going to appear. When they do, they seem other-worldly to me, and they’re often some of my favorites, mostly because I don’t know what they’re about until I read them back to myself.
When I think of my favorite story characters I don’t consider them masterpieces but there is one story that features my favorites. The characters entered the story, they came in a flash and they all appeared at once. There is more than one character, they are what I call a collective of women, and they all have something in common. They are all mothers, whether they wanted to be or not and they take center stage on a conveyor belt in a story titled ‘Where the Mothers of the Gone Children Go.’ I don’t know where the story came from, but it still gives me chills when I read the ending. The story makes me want to read the story over and over again just so I can experience the ending, which feels strange to me since I’m the author, but I don’t know if I’m the one who really wrote this story. It was more like something came through me and I was the instrument used to put the words on paper.
When stories come to me in a flash I believe there is no better feeling in the world. When one of my own stories has the ability to move me emotionally I feel I’ve hit a vein of gold, even if no one else likes the story. If it moves someone else, it’s icing on the cake.
‘Ultra Phenom’ by Copper Rose appears in Tall Tales & Short Stories Volume One.
