“The Heartbreaker’s Apprentice” out now at Flash Fiction Online
“The Heartbreaker’s Apprentice” out now at Flash Fiction Online

“The Heartbreaker’s Apprentice” out now at Flash Fiction Online

My flash story “The Heartbreaker’s Apprentice” is out today at Flash Fiction Online! This story is loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and involves a bittersweet love story and a young woman who is trying to learn the craft of breaking hearts. I was very excited when FFO took it for their Winter Folklore issue because that’s such an exact description of the vibe of this story; it’s told by a chorus of the nameless residents of an unnamed city (in earlier drafts it was obvious that the city was Ottawa, but sometimes those things go by the wayside in bring a story down to flash length), and it involves some very icy magic powers.

This is another story I started writing back in 2019 but couldn’t figure out how to finish. I had put it in the “trunk” file (for stories that I was no longer intending to complete), but early in 2024 I took it out, read it over, and thought “if I could figure out the ending there would be something here.” For a bit it transformed into a poem, and then back into a story, and today I’m happy to share it all with you in its final form.