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In a dusty bookstore off the Las Vegas Strip, a woman trades her careful invisibility for the terrifying possibility of being known.
If I had a super ability, it would be invisibility.
That line became the seed of Still Life in Neon, a 2,500-word short story I wrote over a few days for the next Mad Red Books Monthly.
The idea came from a real moment. I stopped by the shop last week and met Lexi, a new bookseller I hadn’t seen before. We started talking, and I asked if she was a writer too. She smiled and said, “No, I’m an artist. I draw.” When I asked where I could see her work, she told me she hadn’t posted any of it yet. There wasn’t hesitation in her voice exactly—just a kind of quiet readiness not yet acted upon.
That stuck with me.
On the drive home, I kept thinking about what it means to want to be seen but not feel ready for visibility. For artists, writers, and even booksellers, there’s always that gap between creation and exposure—the courage it takes to share what feels private. I started wondering: what if a character lived inside that tension?
So I built a small story set in a bookstore—not Mad Red Books itself, but a Las Vegas one that felt familiar to anyone who’s ever found refuge among shelves. I wanted to write something intimate and human, a cozy romance about fear, art, and the courage to be visible. No sweeping metaphors or world-ending stakes this time—just two women, a sketchbook, and the slow unfurling of connection under fluorescent lights and neon spill.
It was a challenge in restraint: limited word count, limited setting, and a tone that lives between tenderness and vulnerability. I finished it in two days, and it reminded me how freeing short stories can be—small frames that still hold whole lives.
I don’t know yet when Still Life in Neon will appear in Mad Red Books’ newsletter—maybe December—but I hope when it does, readers will feel that quiet courage it takes to be seen.