One of my top-tier favorite pastimes is attending OC Library's hosted literary events featuring best-selling authors. A few days ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Kaira Rouda, an award-winning USA Today and Amazon Charts bestselling author of contemporary fiction that explores what goes on beneath the surface of seemingly perfect lives. Yeah! Bring it on, Kaira!! "Let's talk murder. The fictional kind, of course." That's her tagline. And I love it.

Tick, tock, tick. There's a countdown clock inside my brain. Play the game, play the game, I tell myself. But I can't let him win. Not when it comes to my memories, to what I know about my brother's death. I can't let him win. Can't let Dad gaslight me. Again and again and again.

I wrote ROBBY's Come to Play, a light sci-fi short fiction, in early 2024---a gut reaction to waking up alone in bed one pre-dawn morning and feeling a crazed urge to smash apart my phone and terminate its screeching alarm.