Karl Jackson
Bio
My name is Karl Jackson and I am a marketing professional. In my free time, I enjoy spending time doing something creative and fulfilling. I particularly enjoy painting and find it to be a great way to de-stress and express myself.
Stories (330)
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💌 The Thank-You That Wouldn’t Sit Still
Mara had written the thank-you note twelve times and torn it up every single time. The first version sounded stiff, like something pulled from the back of a greeting card. The second tried humor and landed flat. The third rambled. The fourth felt selfish. By the seventh attempt, the paper itself seemed tired of her.
By Karl Jackson10 days ago in Fiction
📺 The Glow That Followed Me Home
The television looked like a miracle under store lights. It stood there, floating on a wall of black glass, colors spilling out like fireworks. Oceans glimmered. Faces looked carved from light. Every demo loop felt cinematic, like the future had arrived early and decided to hang out near the soundbars.
By Karl Jackson13 days ago in Fiction
🌞 The Heat That Didn’t Ask Permission
The summer it happened wasn’t supposed to matter. It was meant to be a placeholder season, the kind you live through without collecting memories. A stretch of hot days between decisions. A pause before the next version of life began.
By Karl Jackson15 days ago in Fiction
💐 The Space Between Applause
Weddings have a strange gravity. They pull people together who would never otherwise cross paths. Old friends, distant relatives, coworkers dragged along out of obligation. Everyone dressed slightly better than usual, everyone pretending not to check their phones during the vows.
By Karl Jackson17 days ago in Fiction
✈️ The Terminal That Wouldn’t Let Go
The airport clock said 11:47 p.m., but time had stopped behaving like time hours ago. Every screen glowed the same word in different fonts and languages. CANCELED. It stacked down the departure boards like a quiet chant. New York. Chicago. Denver. Paris. Tokyo. Gone. All of them gone, grounded by a storm that had rolled in from nowhere and refused to move on.
By Karl Jackson18 days ago in Fiction
🚆 Leaving the Map Behind
I packed my bag three times before I closed the zipper. Not because I needed more things, but because I needed more courage. Every item felt like a decision. What version of myself was I bringing with me. What version I was finally leaving behind.
By Karl Jackson20 days ago in Fiction
✍️ Ink on a Moving Target
A character learns what it feels like to be revised while still breathing I notice it before it happens. There’s a tightening in the air, a faint tug behind my eyes, the sense that the floor beneath the sentence has gone soft. That’s when my author pauses. That’s when I know I’m about to change again.
By Karl Jackson20 days ago in Fiction
🌩️ Writing Stories That Breathe Inside a Storm
Introduction ✨ Storms are not just weather. In storytelling, they are pressure systems. They compress emotion, distort time, strip characters down to essentials, and force decisions that calm days allow people to avoid. A storm changes how characters move, think, speak, and remember. It disrupts routine and reveals truth.
By Karl Jackson21 days ago in Fiction
🪑 The Chair by the Window
The chair arrived without ceremony. It was wooden, straight-backed, and old enough to creak when the weather changed. The delivery man placed it by the window because there was nowhere else to put it, then left without comment. Mara stood in the middle of her apartment, arms folded, wondering why she had agreed to take it at all.
By Karl Jackson24 days ago in Humans
🗺️ The Salt of the World
When the wells turned bitter, the elders argued for three days before admitting the truth. Water still flowed, but it no longer nourished. Crops withered despite rain. Animals drank and wandered away confused. Children complained that soup tasted like dust. The land was thirsty for something deeper than moisture.
By Karl Jackson26 days ago in Fiction
The Long Way Back 🕊️
Jonah Reed learned the weight of his past the day his hands started shaking for no clear reason. He was forty-seven, standing in line at a quiet grocery store, staring at a display of apples arranged with unnecessary precision. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was happening. And yet his chest felt tight, his palms slick, his breath shallow. He left his basket where it was and walked out into the cold air, heart hammering like he’d been caught doing something terrible.
By Karl Jackson26 days ago in Fiction
🕶️✨ The Invitation No One Was Supposed to See
Arden wasn’t the sort of person who received mysterious envelopes. Their life was the steady kind, measured in quiet mornings, safe routines, and a deep commitment to avoiding anything that smelled even remotely like trouble. They worked at a modest historical archive where the wildest excitement might be the discovery of a mislabeled folio from 1912 or a researcher asking to stay past closing.
By Karl Jacksonabout a month ago in Fiction
