I’m very excited to announce that my latest short story, “Nostrum Diana,” has dropped over at DreadPop, with the gorgeous accompanying art by Jamie Stearns. If you haven’t heard of DreadPop, it’s a cool new online magazine that delivers 1 new short story per week to subscribers, plus exclusive interviewers and more. I definitely recommend checking it out in general.
“Nostrum Diana” is one of my favorite short stories I’ve ever written. It’s quite different than the stuff you’re used to seeing from me. It’s a dark fairy tale in the vein of Angela Carter (and is actually dedicated to her). I’m super proud of this story and I hope you dig it. Here’s a little preview:
The girl lives alone in a tarpaper shack beyond the edge of a town that, once a month, is cursed by the moon.
She’s lived like this for years since her father died. The townspeople shun her and name her witch. Modernity protects her from the gallows but cannot shield her from their whispers. When she trudges the miles into town to the grocery, the pockets of her house-dress clinking with coins saved from trading furs--a vocation passed down by her father, a great hunter--she feels their eyes upon her. Sees them cluck their tongues and clutch their children tight and move to the other side of the street. Their scowls brand her as surely as an iron. Once the mayor himself, behind the wheel of his brand-new Model A, took a screaming blind turn onto Main despite the yellowing of the town’s equally brand-new traffic light and nearly mowed her down, sending her tumbling to the curb and tearing her dress.
It’s unfair, the way the townspeople treat her, but she understands it, too.
For once a month, when the moon plumps like a witch-caged orphan ready for the cauldron, a beast stalks their town, ripping and rending and howling out its blood lust over hill and dale. Whether that beast is witch-conjured or witch itself, no one knows, but they suspect the girl who lives in the tarpaper shack beyond the edge of town, because who else can it be?
To read the rest, go check out DreadPop Magazine today! It’s paywalled but worth the low price of go check out DreadPop Magazine today
Free ebook!
Also, in case you missed it, for a limited time you can grab a free ebook of OUR BLACK HEARTS BEAT AS ONE plus a bunch of other cool horror books here.