It's a Jumble

The haunted house is a staple of horror tales. But in their new books Gwendolyn Kiste and Ai Jiang bring us haunted neighborhoods —Ai Jiang’s work actually involves an entire town—that threaten to entrap and swallow their protagonists whole, keeping them locked in with ghosts of the past. Both books are confrontations with loss and trauma; they’re both about making peace with the dead and letting them go (if you can). They take different forms in these explorations and approach these themes from different angles and with differing outcomes. But they are both gorgeously told works, and haunting.   The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste Twenty years ago, Velkwood Street—a little block of eight houses, in a “blink-and-miss-it sort of subdivision”—disappeared from the face of the earth. Or rather, it part-way disappeared: it’s still visible, glowing, half-there and half-not, a kind of suburban Brigadoon behind an invisible, supernatural barrier. Scientists, government agencies, a...

  Late, but here are some stories I read and loved in December 2023 and January 2024.   Published in 2023 (many from earlier in the year)   “What is Owed and What Can Never Be” by Ariel Mark Jack in Beneath Ceaseless Skies “I am owed this death.” All that is around Viktoriya halts as the words exhale into whiteness against the winter-bleached sky. She squeezes the chilly trigger between steady beats of her sturdy heart. The rifle, held tight to her shoulder, kicks like a storm. The five-legged deer crumples into the brush. A young woman ekes out a living for herself in a harsh wilderness, hunting to feed and clothe herself and pay off a contract debt that she was tricked into as a child. But what starts off as a gritty, compelling tale of survival and debt bondage takes on an unexpected turn toward the end, becoming a beautiful, hopeful tale that asks: what is owed to us in life? What do we owe? What is owned, what is ours, and what can never be taken away? ...

I have a new story that’s out and free to read today! “The Cold Inside”   is published at the lovely Metaphorosis Magazine as part of a special issue of returning authors (check out the other writers in the Winter Issue of 2024 !)  “The Cold Inside” is about grief and cold and a ghost in white. It’s set in the woods of northern Michigan, in an unnamed town but based on a region I know and love. The artwork that Candra Hope c reated for my story is perfect , and I’m so pleased to be part of this magazine.