Love Ever After, Crossing Serbia by Karen J. Mossman

As I am reviewing all the stories in this anthology, I can’t review mine, so instead, I will tell you little bit about it, and where it came from.

The whole tale evolved from a dream I had way back in the nineties. I was being forced to cross a river and was terrified I was going to drown. A nice guy, no idea who at that time, helped me overcome it and coaxed me to take the first steps to join the others on the opposite bank. I’m not scared of water, in fact just the opposite, I love it. So it probably came from something I saw or read.

At the time Yugoslavia was being broken up into what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic was a politician and instigated the break-up of the country. He was continually in the news back then. So I wrote a short story marrying the two things, me being afraid of water, and the war. An odd pairing, but it worked. The story sat for a long time doing nothing and eventually I put it in book of short stories because I didn’t know what else to do with it at that time.

When the opportunity arose to join the Love Ever After anthology I knew it would be a perfect fit. I rewrote it, doubling the word count to just over eight thousand words.

My main character, Tanya has a good heart and believes that love one another is a far better way to live than with hate in your heart. She just wants to help people. The hero in this story, and he is because he rescued here was originally called Seb. But since then I have used Seb in The Ghost on the Stairs, he needed a new name. I posted on my Facebook page for suggestions, and one of them was Liam. Little did I know how popular that name would be in this anthology.

I made this for the descriptions of my story and the beautiful graphics were made by Eleanor, who put the book together.

For a review of my story, read the first comment by Paula Acton. It’s lovely.

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