In 2005, I spent over a week at the Writers of the Future workshop in Los Angeles.  It was the first time I’d been away from my young son for any length of time.

One of the workshop assignments was to write a story in 24 hours, and the story had to contain certain elements we didn’t know about until the clock started ticking.  So I tapped into a version of “write what you know,” and started a story about a mother who missed her child.

And now I’ve put that story up for free.