Vanessa Gonzales
Bio
“Rule one, you have to write. If you don’t write, nothing will happen.” - Neil Gaiman
When I'm not writing, I take photos. You can see them here.
Achievements (1)
Stories (15/0)
A Marriage of Earth and Water
Chapter 1: Sailing ------------------------------- Nell is listening, more or less, when her Aunt Eleanor mentions that single second-class passengers may be asked to share accommodations on the Atlantic crossing. She hears the words, but in the excitement of buying her ticket and the flurry of packing, they drift past like flotsam on a sea of other information, and she pays them no mind until later.
By Vanessa Gonzales7 months ago in Chapters
- Top Story - September 2023
Mythology: Let's talk about Zeus
Look at this classical creeper. An immortal who couldn't keep it in his pants, or under his toga. He left a trail of duped women, disgraced priestesses, living constellations and abandoned demigod children in his wake. No wonder his wife was always mad.
By Vanessa Gonzales8 months ago in Critique
- Runner-Up in Tales Retold Challenge
Toward the Dark Sea
“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” “Is this how you answer calls when I’m out, Alexander? Sorry, excuse me–” Faith elbowed her way out of a packed lift and onto the lower mezzanine, joining a stream of jumpsuit-clad workers headed downward to their jobs on the mechanical and engineering levels.
By Vanessa Gonzales2 years ago in Fiction
The Next Big Thing
There weren't always dragons in the Valley. For ages after the turn of the millennium, the preferred pets were purse dogs, all fluff and eyes, yapping and snapping at people in the line at Starbucks. Hairless cats were en vogue for a bit, with yellow goblin stares and fuzzy sweaters to keep their naked skin warm. They could have fit in a purse too, but you know what cats are like.
By Vanessa Gonzales2 years ago in Fiction
The Best Gifts
I. Toby heard the creature before he ever saw it. He heard it late at night, rustling and shuffling and thumping under the floorboards in his room, too soft to make out clearly and too persistent to ignore. It stopped when he switched on the light, so he told himself that it was just his imagination running away with him (one of his mother's favorite phrases) and went back to sleep, after first making sure all the tasty bits of himself were covered by the blanket.
By Vanessa Gonzales2 years ago in Horror
Price of Admission
The traveling circus rolled into town like thunder on a sticky-hot summer night. Lydia and I were right there to meet it, all fizzy inside with excitement. We hadn't had a circus come in at least twenty years—maybe thirty. I guess word gets around on the entertainment circuit.
By Vanessa Gonzales2 years ago in Horror
Tea with the Moirai
It looks like the sort of shop you’d expect to see hidden away on a back street, tucked into a corner. The sort of shop that in a story, someone might visit on a wet afternoon, only to find the next day that it had vanished as if it had never been there.
By Vanessa Gonzales2 years ago in Fiction
Basketball Free-for-All
As a middle-schooler, I was terrible at sports. It wasn't because I was clumsy or unfit. I could ride bikes and climb trees and zip right up those metal poles they make you scale in PE class. The problem was that at 12 and 13, I was still on the wrong side of puberty and looked more like a nine-year-old, putting me at a huge disadvantage against girls who were already the size of adults. But I was also stubborn as hell, and no one was going to tell me what I couldn't do, so I tried out for every sport as its season came around anyway.
By Vanessa Gonzales2 years ago in Motivation
