I love to support Toys for Tots. Every year, my kids and I would go and shop for children less fortunate than them. My youngest is working here in our hometown and we still donate every year. I was pleased to hear that one of my publishers was putting together a horror/fantasy anthology to benefit this charity and I wanted to participate.

My husband inadvertently gave me the idea for a story when he accidentally poked his eye on a bamboo plant putting it in the floorboard of the car. When he went to the eye doctor, she said the plant had scratched his cornea and gave him a fungus.

Well, it was off to the races with my imagination. What if someone got a fungus in his eye and it grew and grew into a mushroom crawling out on his face???  And what if someone decided to try to rescue him and was given seemingly impossible tasks to do so? And what if all we’d ever believed about magical creatures was turned upside down?

It was a super fun story to write and I can’t wait for it to be out in the world.

To hold you over until Sept, here’s a fungus/mushroom growing on an oak tree in my yard. Almost like it was hanging out to be part of the story, right?  🙂