First, a confession: I’m a jigsaw puzzle addict. I’ve always loved word puzzles, but the jigsaw habit started during the Covid era, when we were spending long days inside, away from our usual activities. I came across a website offering daily jigsaw puzzles, including a huge archive, and started doing at least one each afternoon. Most were landscapes or city scenes, and they were a nice way to escape to other settings during a time when travel was limited. I kept doing them even after life returned to something like normal.
As with many stories, the key elements for “Girl on the Edge” drifted into my mind at different times, percolating a lot before coming together in a final form. I started by speculating about the people who create and produce jigsaw puzzles. Having done some work in the past with user testing of websites, I wondered whether the jigsaw puzzle industry uses a similar process.
Wouldn’t that be a great job, I imagined, getting paid to do jigsaw puzzles and talk about your thought process while doing them?
Maybe a great job, but not a great story. No struggle, no conflict.
But then I thought: what if you were forced to do jigsaw puzzles under pressure, and all you ever got to work on were the edges? Suddenly not such a great job! But a better basis for a story.
The missing piece (forgive the pun) came after my husband and I were fortunate enough to spend a month in Vienna last fall. When we returned, the idea of user testing jigsaw puzzles under duress somehow came together with Vienna. I imagined a character stuck in a dismal setting—a Florida prison—and then suddenly presented with an image of Vienna, the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited. I wanted to tell the story of how her imaginary escape evolved into something that she didn’t expect.
Interesting! Thanks, Kathryn! Be sure to check out "Girl on the Edge" and the rest of the August 2026 stories!
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