April Cope
Bio
April is a writer and musician with music on most streaming platforms like Pandora and Spotify. She lives in Asheville NC and works as a copywriter, is a mother of 2 boys and is writing a mystery.
Stories (8/0)
- Top Story - December 2023
- Runner-Up in Next Great [American] Novel Challenge
The Lies of Bracken HollowRunner-Up in Next Great [American] Novel Challenge
“Sexpot,” Alice whispered, raising her blond eyebrows. The half-sisters took their places on a braided rug that smelled faintly of cat pee. But Harriet wasn’t trying to be a sexpot. What was a sexpot anyway? Was it someone who tried to be like Madonna or Cindi Lauper? The Bracken Hollow Elysians would have none of that kind of music. Harriet had to listen secretly on her Walkman in the small room she shared with Alice while her mother listened to Bulgarian choral music in the kitchen.
By April Cope8 months ago in Fiction
Close to Home
As my stocking feet move through the hall to Albert’s closet, I am keenly aware I am doing something unforgivable. Reaching onto the shelf, I peer at the tiny letters on the pharmaceutical bottles, looking for the sedative that starts with Z. Here it is. I can smell the persimmons ripening in the next room on the windowsill. Peeking past the threshold and around the piano, I see the ridiculous sign duct-taped below a procession of rotund, orange fruits awaiting their fate. Scrawled in black sharpie, the sign reads, “Do not partake in the persimmons!”
By April Cope8 months ago in Chapters
The Legend of the Starlight Feather
Long ago, when the world was still young and the lands were covered in ferns, a magnificent kingdom of birds known as Aviaria made their home in the teeming foothills of the mountains. These birds were no ordinary creatures; they possessed remarkable abilities, including the gift of celestial navigation. They could traverse the skies with grace, soaring high above the clouds, and they knew exactly where to migrate when the winter winds began to ruffle their soft coats of feathers. But it was not always so.
By April Cope9 months ago in Fiction
- Runner-Up in Return of the Night Owl Challenge
Crimes of a FeatherRunner-Up in Return of the Night Owl Challenge
1911-Cornwall Awake early, Imogen watched from her upstairs bedroom window as the men walked down the road toward the China clay plant. Was the blue-eyed boy among them this time? From this angle, it was difficult to tell. She could hear a lone thrush call out to its mate, and then a mournful cooing.
By April Cope2 years ago in Fiction
Horsehair on Heartstrings
Greta waited anxiously for the fiddler as she finished her music theory homework on supertonic and subdominant seventh chords. It was confusing stuff. She sat cross-legged in the window seat hunched over her score papers and notes, trying to make sense of the assignment. Hoping that speaking the concepts aloud might make them clearer, she read from her textbook. “In the Bach, note how the alto leaps to A on the second beat. The sole purpose of leaping at this point is to prepare the suspension." Scanning the facing page with a sour grimace, she continued, "keeping the E through the second beat would have produced an irregular leap into the dissonance.”
By April Cope3 years ago in Humans
"Shaken by a Living Wind"
On the Manistee River banks, a Potawatomi tribal leader—Simon Pokagon —heard something strange and unnerving as he prepared his fishing traps. It was a bright spring morning in 1850 Michigan and except for a distant, mysterious rumble, all was clear and tranquil around the water. But the sound grew louder by the moment until finally the 20-year-old fisherman put down his traps and stopped dead in waders, frozen in fear. “An army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the deep forests towards me,” he wrote later about the experience.
By April Cope3 years ago in Futurism
Inside the Blood Pheasant
Harriet couldn’t wait to open the little black book that documented her great grandfather’s bird discoveries from around the world. His daughter, Grandma Violet, had promised it to her for years. Harriet had followed in the footsteps of the elder man of birds. Now that she was in London to investigate the late colonel’s potential fraud, Grandma Violet had invited her to Lambsfield Manor to collect some of the possessions he had left to her. The coveted little black book was said to be full of sketches and watercolor illustrations of the birds he had observed, shot, and studied over the many decades of his long career in both ornithology and in the military. Harriet hoped it might contain clues to the mystery that she so hoped to solve after she heard of the allegations that he might have stolen and doctored hundreds of bird specimens from museums and claimed them as his own.
By April Cope3 years ago in Criminal
