News
This month, my biggest news is that Curbside Curses, featuring my story “Video Girl,” is out! When I saw that Moon Palace, my local indie bookstore of choice, had a copy I just had to take a picture. Excuse me for being a little dorky, but I’ve never seen words that I wrote for sale in a bookstore I love. Hopefully it’ll happen often enough that I should lose that sense of wonder, but never actually do. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy and helped support this excellent group of writers. I am honored to be among them.
Now I’ve got a bit of a lull. I’ll be sending more things out but as of right now, I have nothing on my release calendar until October, where I’ll appear in not one but TWO very cool anthologies.
Non-Fiction
Review: Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
A follow-up to her brutal and spectacular debut (2022’s Manhunt), Cuckoo shows Felker-Martin firing on all cylinders, cementing her as one of the most important new writers in the horror scene.
The story follows seven teens sent to a conversion therapy camp out in the desert. This comes with virtually all the stuff you would expect. Campers are forced to do hard labor, they’re mocked by the adults at the camp, beaten by the other Campers, and fed off-putting, possibly spoiled, food. Each of them: Nadine, Gabe, Malcolm, John, Felix, Shelby, and Jo, have a different reason for being sent to the camp, and each come from a different (though no less intolerant) background.
The setting is horrifying enough, and Felker-Martin is never afraid to delve into the bigotry, self-loathing, and general sense of danger that queer people feel in a society hostile to them. But then there’s the cosmic horror element. This isn’t a spoiler. The prologue tells us the story of a young woman sent to the camp and who comes back proper, prim, and ready to be a part of straight society. Told through the perspective of her mother, who feels that there is something deeply wrong with her daughter still, we learn that there is something wrong. Of course, by the time she finds this out, it’s too late. She’s being torn apart by an alien shapeshifter.
Our plucky heroes “survive” their time at camp, only for the evil to resurface fifteen years later. Now, they have to set aside their trauma and their broken lives and end the evil once and for all.
My only criticism is that I felt there may have been too many characters to properly follow, especially at the beginning. A few who seem to get introduced as part of the crew are done away with, but the cast of seven heroes makes it hard to track who’s who at the top, save for a few. Several characters have shared elements of trauma, and as the alien causes them to share thoughts and memories, tracking who is struggling with what particular aspect of themselves is a bit of a challenge. That’s part of the point, of course, but I found it challenging.
This is not a problem for me but it might be for some readers: this is an extreme body horror novel that delves into the real violence and hatred faced by queer and trans people, and especially queer and trans people of color. It’s brutal and unrelenting, and while it is for sure going to be among the best horror novels released this year, it is not for everyone. It’s not even for everyone who likes horror.
As for what I liked most: Felker-Martin’s willingness to “go there” will never fail to make me squirm, but what she does better than most other horror writers is to provide an action sequence that has me saying “hell yeah” under my breath. I reacted physically to so many scenes in this book, either with revulsion, breathless tension, or pulse-pounding action. The characters, even if I took a minute to vibe with all of them, had won my heart by the end of the book. I was invested in their own troubles, their relationships to each other, their various ways of coping with the world around them. In particular I loved Shelby, even if she isn’t the strongest, most heroic, or the best leader. Shelby rules.
In summary, this is a brutal extreme body horror novel with cosmic elements that forms sort of a compromise between IT and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It explores an underutilized but deeply horrifying setting with a cast of flawed but lovable kids. If you can stomach it, I highly recommend you pick up a copy asap.
Fiction
Empress
She showed up two or three times before Evan realized she never actually saw her arrive or leave. Since he had to truck in from Mouthtrap, he expected that at least once they would cross paths, but she always appeared during the show, as if materializing from the walls themselves.
Tonight, she holds court in the corner. Casey is there, of course. Ricky, Evan’s roommate and drummer for Throw is there too. Evan allows his eyes to light on her just long enough for her to notice. In the moment that their eyes meet, a shock pulses through him.
Her eyes are wide, rimmed with black eyeliner that makes them stand out further. Her irises are a dark brown, from this distance almost black. The shape of her face draws downward into a tiny point. Blond hair, dyed blond, platinum, is drawn away from her face by a headband and gathered back into a loose braid.
He stares just long enough for a smile to form on her lips before he turns away and sneaks into the kitchen to grab a can of beer from the torn-open box.
“What’s up?” The voice behind him asks. Evan turns. He sees Ali, expectant, curious. She always finds him when he is lost even to himself.
“Nothing, why?” he says back.
“Can I say something kind of mean, or like, weird?” Ali asks.
“Yeah, shoot.”
She leans forward, looking around as if to ensure no one is paying attention. “There’s something weird about that girl,” she says. “She got like, no hair except on her head.”
Evan looks at her for a beat, for two, before Ali’s face twists in a look of annoyance. “Like on her arms, see? She’s got nothing there, like she shaves it.”
Evan saw the fine hairs on Ali’s wrist, the remnants of fur that must have once covered their whole bodies.
“I’m gonna try and talk to her, see what her deal is,” Evan says, and Ali puts up a hand.
“Don’t be weird, and don’t break Casey’s heart, man. After that tarot girl freaked out and yartzed on the table, I think he’s been feeling like he’s had a rough go.”
“I’m not trying to flirt with her, I just kind of want to know what the deal is. Have you ever seen her come or go?”
“No,” Ali says, “But I almost never see anyone come or go. Me and Sammy are too busy keeping this place afloat. Casey and JohnJohn are usually greeting folks or kicking them out.”
“Hmm–”
“But,” Ali says, “There have been a few times when she emerges from the basement door and it makes me wonder if she’s like, coming in through the door down there and that I don’t like.”
“Yeah, that’s weird.”
“Maybe, if that’s what’s happening. I’m more freaked out about the hair thing if I’m being honest.” Someone else comes along, some girl Evan only knows has some class with Ali, and then he’s standing on his own. He feels a little awkward, a little out of sorts. It would be hard to admit this, but it’s how he’s always felt at Golden Glove Social, the homebase for his band, but not the place where he lives. He is both guest and host and that is a hard place to be.
But then, as if she senses his awkwardness, she rolls in. The girl, flanked by no one at all, blessedly alone for the first time Evan has seen.
“Hey there,” he says.
“Hello. You’re Evan, right? You’re the one who doesn’t live here.” Her voice is soft and kind, with a kind of breathy excitement that makes it sound like she’s backstage somewhere important, not milling around a mildewy kitchen in Milwaukee.
“Oh, you’ve heard of me?” he says.
“I’ve seen you play! But you live somewhere else, right?”
“Yeah, I live over on Bremen, at the Mouthtrap. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you there before.”
Her eyes, rimmed in dark makeup, go wide and then narrow. For a moment, she looks like she is trying to translate what he’s said in her mind, like he was speaking French and she must jostle the words into the right order and eke out his meaning.
“No,” she says at last, “This is the only house I’ve ever been to. I like your band though!” Her enthusiasm is palpable. She really does like the band, or if she is performing, she is performing with immense grace and skill. The performance is enough on its own to gain his trust.
“Where do you live?” he asks. The can of beer rises to his lips, an attempt to look casual but instead, he worries that it underscores the potential creepiness of the question. Where does she live? Why would anyone ask that in that way? What was normal? Do you live close by?
“One sec,” she says, and walks back into the living room. One sec stretches into two, into three, and then it’s time to play. Evan tries not to dwell on it too much, tries not to wonder for too long if she brushed him off or if she just got distracted in a busy environment.
He was close enough to see her cheeks though, close enough to see that the hairs on Ali’s cheeks weren’t there on hers. Maybe she does shave them, he thought.
***
The set went well, because the practices went well. Sammy would say as much, and Ali would agree with him. Evan loves the moments he spends in front of his friends, showing off the results of his practice. There is no need to break big, no record deal waiting, no desire for one. But Evan takes it seriously, as seriously as anyone else in the scene, because he is making art for his friends.
The last chord whines to an end. He’s so sweaty. The salty water is in all his crevices, smeared across his red face. It’s so hot down here, and there are so many people. How do they get so many people in the basement? When he’s down here, hanging out with Sammy during laundry day, the room seems so small, but now a veritable army has crowded in.
And she is also there. She is there in the front, her eyes wide, but her hair still perfectly pulled back, her white dress is still shining and unrumpled.
“Jake the Dog is next,” he says, and he looks at her once more. She isn’t sweating. Not one drop, not one rash of pink, is on her face.
***
Crashing on the couch beats the walk back to Bremen, short though it may be, four out of five times. If a couch is available, Evan is likely to sleep on it.
He is just as likely, as tonight, to stumble out of bed and wander over to the bathroom, the accumulated beer swilling in his belly, desperate to escape. He stumbles into a moonbeam. The sound through the doors is none of his business.
After he has let loose his stream, after he has washed his hands, he walks past the basement door again, and now he hears something that may be his business. The basement should be empty, should be the sole domain of the water heater and the electrical panel.
It is not. There is someone down there. With one trembling hand he opens the door and peers down. The darkness is complete, but the silence is not. The sound of someone whispering to themselves drifts up to him.
He takes the creaky stairs one at a time, and the sound is so low, so quiet, he loses it with each creak. When he gets to the bottom, he does not announce himself. He flicks on the light.
There she is, her hair and dress the same, and her finger is moving in a perfect arc across the concrete floor. She is whispering as she lifts the finger and places marks next to the arc.
“Hey, what are you–?” he begins, but she does not respond. She looks up, and goes still.
The moment hangs like the wet smell of the basement. Her eyes meet his, but they don’t reflect any light. The dim bulb that swings above his head illuminates nothing in her. He wants to ask her so many questions about what she is doing down here, about how she got in, about the symbol on the floor, what it means and what it means to her.
Before he can, her mouth opens, wider and wider, and her eyes begin to sink. Her shoulders slump, first by the expected amount and then they sink further and further, as if there are no bones to hold them.
Then she crumbles. Her hair, her dress, her round eyes, they all drip into great gouts of foam which splash onto the floor. The foam gathers up into the arc shape, into the dots, into the sections Evan did not see. It gathers there as her body dissolves, and then it vanishes.
Evan stands in the silent basement for a long time. His eyes catch slivers of the design on the floor, but he can’t quite make himself see or unsee it all at once. When he feels strong enough, he flips off the light and bolts up the stairs, like a child outrunning the basement dark. The trip back to his place on Bremen is short, but he doesn’t sleep a wink.