Roel F. Concepcion, A Broken Man's Game, fiction by TahomaLiterary

Parenthood has unique ways of letting us know that the most precious thing in the world is spending time with our loved ones. I was caring for my two-year-old boy when Aster, the main lead, first appeared to me. He was married with no kids, and I wanted to take his character to a level of self-loathing that would’ve pushed his life down to a place of irretrievable despair. So I gave him a child, named her Billie, and out came “A Broken Man’s Game,” featuring echoes of pity coming from my own place of irretrievable despair.

Roel F. Concepcion is a Philippines-born American fiction writer, tweets @wordsling, and occasionally blogs at wordsling.com.