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# Still Life in Neon — Artist’s Statement
- URL: https://keithhayden.net/still-life-in-neon-artists-statement/
- Published: 2025-11-03T16:15:51.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-03T16:22:23.000Z
- Description: What it takes to be seen
- Author: Keith Hayden

## Video

## Audio

![audio-thumbnail](https://storage.ghost.io/c/18/bf/18bf29db-1cec-4857-a9dc-e2e94a86d2bf/content/media/2025/11/Still-Life-in-Neon_thumb.jpg)

Still Life in Neon

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## Text

> *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.

## Music - "Invisible"