Grace and the Grey Angel

I have a new story out in the world called Grace and the Grey Angel, which has been published in the anthology Fornever After from Jolly Horror Press.  In this story, delivery man Martel falls in love with agoraphobic sculptor Grace, and in vowing to help her conquer her fears gets way more than he bargained for.  The idea for this story came from an incredible angel sculpture that appeared outside my workplace a few years ago.  I never found out who the artist was.  When I returned for a second look a few days later, the angel was gone.

I'm unsure which genre this story falls into.  Maybe comic fantasy with a touch of horror?  Here's an except:

"But it wasn’t only awe the angel inspired in him, there was fear too.  When he’d said it was big, he hadn’t meant only in size.  It had presence.  A strange kind of authority.  The head jutted forward and the eyes were fixed as if it were scrutinizing him rather than being scrutinised itself.  And there was something about the way Grace had carved its expression that made it seem as if the angel looked right into his thoughts.  The sensation was so powerful the hairs bristled on the back of his neck and he had to turn away.  He could still feel its eyes boring into his back as he set the clay down where Grace indicated."

Grace and the Grey Angel was in danger of becoming a trunk story until my good friend the writer Robert Pope gave me some suggestions on how to rework the ending.  As a thank you I'm going to give a shout out to Robert's wonderful short story collection, Killers & Others (see cover at the end of this post).

I'd also like to thank the team at Jolly Horror Press, Jonathan Lambert and Autumn Miller, for accepting this story and the hard work they put into the anthology.