Nicole Degennaro

Paper & Kindling Nicole Degennaro

Paper & Kindling contains twelve short stories and four poems, each paired with a beautiful illustration. Inspired by each other, these tales explore from the heights of the stars to the darkest depths of the human mind and just about everything in between.

A child learns of an inevitable guest, a blacksmith must forge an impossible key, an off-duty employee has an unwelcome interruption and forests cling to mountain sides that none will ever climb.

A determined soul makes an otherworldly trip while an article of clothing accidentally changes hands and changes lives at the same time. Happiness comes more quickly when we can build it into ourselves and one author knows just how to get his story read.

Then there's the medium who just wants to have a nice dinner with a nice girl without the other side crashing in for once and a Revolutionary soldier who hopes to raise a glass or two before the war is over. There's a blackness in the walls reaching out and sometimes the only way back is forward.

It's hard to feel haunted where it's never dark; sometimes terror unfurls in broad daylight. What happens when someone pushes science too far or science pushes someone too far away?

Follow the threads of inspiration that four authors used to weave their tales. After all, the end of one story is just the start of another.