N.V. Haskell returned to writing in 2019, luckily just a few months before the world shut down. Since then, she’s had numerous short fiction publications and won the Writers of the Future contest, published in volume 38. She lives somewhere between suburbia and haunted creeks with her long-suffering spouse, rescue dog, and too many squirrels that she can’t help but feed. After a long career in healthcare, she remains stubbornly optimistic. The first book in her series, The Broken Bonds of Magic, will be published in 2025 with Cursed Dragon Ship publishing.

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I wrote “The Sky Keepers Daughter” over a twenty-four hour period during the Writers of the Future week-long intensive workshop, when each writer was given an item to use as inspiration. The item I received was a bullet casing which, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with this story. When I turned the casing on its end, I envisioned a pedestal where goddesses might stand and survey the world.