Welcome to the Marathonarium Anthology of short stories! This set of fiction and the experience collecting it encapsulates the spirit of the Imaginarium Convention, an event for writers, storytellers, and creatives of all genres held in Louisville, Kentucky each year!

You have before you the creative fortitude of nine determined storytellers who not only plunged into the madness that is marathon writing for three solid hours, but who also stepped outside of their comfort zones to hand over their unedited and hastily crafted works to be read by a stranger.

What began as a workshop to help authors complete a story for publication while producing a compendium to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the Imaginarium Convention turned into a family of nine creative minds pushing themselves to the limit!

In the end, the writers accomplished something spectacular.

I mean, have you ever written a four-thousand-word story with beginning, middle, and end in three hours? And then have you turned that mass of words over to an editor for her review and suggestions?

It's downright frightening. But the authors you're about to meet (or meet again) in the following pages did that exact thing and lived to tell the tale…

The nine authors spotlighted in Volume 1 in the order that their stories are presented in the book are:

W. Jade Young

Brian T. Ronk

Alisa Childress

Jeannene Walker

Jen Selinsky

Lisa Mildon

Clayton Barnett

Carma Haley Shoemaker

Tom Ukinski