"Saltwater" - The Story
As you know, my flash fiction "Saltwater" was accepted for publication into Tiny Seed Literary Journal (yay!). This particular piece has a lot of history to it, so I wanted to share "the story behind the story," as it were. This story was inspired by a sample TAKS writing prompt my junior year of high school. The prompt was, more or less, Write about how home can be more than a place. It just got me thinking, and before long, the original form of "Saltwater" was born, simply titled "Home" (for lack of a better title). For years afterward, that original short story sat on my desktop, untouched and mostly forgotten. Until I was flying home from my first year of college, and the song "Home" by Daughtry came over my headphones. I remembered that short story, and decided I wanted to do more with it. Over the next several years, the short story expanded into a full-length novel, which underwent many, many drafts and a point-of-view change be...