Author Kat Heckenbach of Valrico is the featured author in an anthology published by Havok Publishing. The newly released anthology is called Stories That Sing: Havok Season Two. All of the flash fiction stories in the anthology are inspired by songs from the 50s through the 90s and are speculative fiction. Heckenbach’s young adult story is called A Fly on the Wall.
In addition to being a featured author, Heckenbach is an artist. The cover of Stories That Sing: Havok Season Two features one of Heckenbach’s award-winning paintings. The painting is of a phoenix. The 16” x 20” mixed media piece earned a third place ribbon at the Florida State Fair Fine Arts Competition this past February and won Best in Show at the Tampa Sci-Fi/Fantasy Convention, Necronomicon, in October 2019.
Heckenbach took inspiration from the song Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) by The Offspring to write A Fly on the Wall. In the story, a teen boy has a secret crush on a girl he believes to be out of his league, and he has a secret he knows would scare her even farther away.
Heckenbach said, “The story is not scary at all. It is actually one of the more humorous stories I have written.”
Heckenbach added, “The form of speculative fiction used here is paranormal. The story world is our world, but the character has an unusual characteristic that is not found in the normal world.”
Heckenbach grew up in Riverview, attended Hillsborough Community College and the University of Tampa and she now resides in Valrico with her husband and daughter.
Heckenbach started writing in 2008 and began her writing career with a short story called Willing Blood. This was a horror story that won the Editor’s Choice for the July/August 2009 issue of The Absent Willow Review, an online magazine.
Her first published novel was Finding Angel, which was published in 2011. This was the first in a young adult fantasy trilogy called the Toch Island Chronicles. Heckenbach’s most recent novel, Relent, which is about a paranormal romance, was released in 2017.
Heckenbach’s writings can be found on Amazon.com. You can also find her artwork in her Etsy shop at JumpingRails and at FineArtAmerica.com.
For more on Heckenbach, please visit www.katheckenbach.com.
