Publications

Forthcoming

Black with Ash, Red with Grinding

Lodged in Molotov Cocktail’s Killer Flash 2024 mega-issue, this one’s about the dark stuff different groups of people do to the other. I was thinking about colonialism, oppression, evangelism, and appropriation, but the great thing about darkness is, that shit’s everywhere. You can’t cover it all in under a thousand words.

Omigaa

Included in Molotov Cocktail’s Killer Flash mega issue, this is a story about being different, figuring out who you are, and the pain we may inadvertently cause others in the process.

Schooling for Coach

A sudden fiction featured in the beautiful zine The Mysteries Trade, no. 001: FISH, which is filled with a glorious range of creations. It’s about a mediocre high school basketball team trying to learn a new play from their biology teacher slash coach with unexpectedly high stakes.

On Snowflake-veined Wings

A shortish, darkish tale about the intermingling horrors of corporate America, allergies, and social media. First published in Bourbon Penn #28 in ’22, and podcast in June ’24 at Podcastle.

Publications

Black with Ash, Red with Grinding

Lodged in Molotov Cocktail’s Killer Flash 2024 mega-issue, this one’s about the dark stuff different groups of people do to the other. I was thinking about colonialism, oppression, evangelism, and appropriation, but the great thing about darkness is, that shit’s everywhere. You can’t cover it all in under a thousand words.

Omigaa

Included in Molotov Cocktail’s Killer Flash mega issue, this is a story about being different, figuring out who you are, and the pain we may inadvertently cause others in the process.

Dreams of Me

This bleaklicious flash appeared in Horror Tree‘s weekly online publication, Trembling with Fear. If you like creepy doll ghosts and don’t mind the horror of how they got that way or what they might do, you might enjoy this one.

Bad Meat

The Drabblecast published this weird, gross little story, complete with inspiring sound effects.

Separate Worlds

Check out PULP Literature Issue 41, Winter 2024, which includes “Separate Worlds”, my skippy fun flash about phones, tones, bones, and a little global meltdown. It’s just one possible answer to the age-old question for whom that bell tolls. I hope its truthy darkness resonates in you.

A Break from the Sky

This flash won first place in Backchannels Journal‘s 2022 fiction contest. The story mixes an airport with a cabin, adds a splash of nostalgia, and garnishes it with a shitty marriage. Give it a try, maybe it’s your kind of cocktail.

On Snowflake-veined Wings

A shortish, darkish tale about the intermingling horrors of corporate America, allergies, and social media. First published in Bourbon Penn #28 in ’22, and podcast in June ’24 at Podcastle.

Fair Aliquant

An executioner serves justice to the traitor who murdered the beloved princess. Published September 30, 2022 at Daily Science Fiction.

Smilers

“Smilers” was originally published in Bourbon Penn #20 in March 2020. Podcastle produced an audio reprint in January 2022, and it was translated into Chinese in the October 2021 issue of Science Fiction World. “Smilers” also received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow‘s Best Horror of the Year Volume 13. The Smilerverse is spreading!

The Hungry Eye

A teenager’s in line for coffee ahead of a pushy man in a suit, but what’s served up is more than the cappuccino he ordered. Published in Bourbon Penn #23, March 2021.

Dark Morsels

Sample the tasty darkness. A collection of eleven tiny fictions, including two new flashes to deepen that hollow, hopeless feeling we all cherish. Published by Red Bird Chapbooks in July 2023. Contents: Beetle in Her Pocket Flip Side Waiting for the Trustafarian Migration Baksheesh* Alpaca Lips Sparkly Thing The Slow Rise of Foreign Bodies Meat […]

Meat for Skritches

Tyler was watching a sitcom in the trailer’s breakfast nook, petting the purring furnace that was Skritches in his lap, when the power went out for good . . .

Smilers

Aiden rests his chin on the back of the living room couch, watching his older brother mow down zombies . . .

Dwindling Topographies

In a collapsed hall, an echoing crunch truncates panicked screaming. Later, a wrinkled sheet of parchment skips corner over corner across the heaving stones of an empty plaza, catching on a clattering stand of dry stalks rising from a russet mound that was once a fighting machine. The bones of its soldiers were scavenged long […]

Alpaca Lips

This drabble is a little horror show. I wrote it because well, darkness, and also I can’t help myself with Dad joke caliber wordplay. It’s a compulsion, and sometimes if you’re note careful compulsions can be kindapocalyptic. Check it out here.

Thing is, Iv’e Changed

As the clock struck midnight, ushering in my fiftieth birthday . . .

Waiting for the Trustafarian Migration

Trees creak in the steady wind rushing off the foothills.

Trustafarians dash from coffee shop couches into the streets to spin like bearded dust devils, worshipping the wind. They call the winds chinooks, just like the locals, not that they’ve met many of those. Rare birds, those locals.

Beetle in her Pocket

“I’m going to be an entomologist,” Isabelle says. Her dress doesn’t have a pocket, or she’d have brought one of her pets. Her hands feel empty.

In the Closet with Carrie

We were pressed against the back wall behind a tangle of dresses and hangers, the Boone’s Farm in our stomachs rising against the reek of moth balls.

The Slow Rise of Foreign Bodies

A year after the explosion, the shell fragments pushing through Hobson’s skin are slow torture.

Last Dance

Alone on a sidewalk, a young girl dances slowly through the silent snowfall.

Ms. Solevacj’s Leaf-mould

Ms. Solevacj was in the middle of her 72-lap morning mile, the early sluggishness in her muscles burned off, leaving her feeling strong, a machine gliding through the water. This was why she swam, to reach this Zen-like headspace, her mind and body simultaneously relaxed and stimulated. In this state, and only in this state, she could think clearly, almost calmly, about the Smiler virus.

Dead Spider Curl

We’re loaded down with tampons and pads, and Mom’s heading straight for the cute checker’s lane. Seriously? I’d die if I had to stand there while he rung us out. It’s obvious, right? I totally get it, she’s distracted, sad about Lance and all that, but right now we’ve got bigger issues. I steer her toward the old lady’s lane.

Mouses

Short Story (1,388). Spark: A Creative Anthology IV, Spring 2014.

Sparkly Thing

The restaurant was empty, the lunch rush over,
and I was buffing down tables in hard circles—Ryan
had just moved in with some stupid cow he met at a
club—when a heavyset middle-aged woman
sporting gigantic shades came in.

Junior’s Rolling Oasis

Originally published in Kansas City Voices #11, Fall 2013.

Flip Side

Squatting on the curb in front of a boarded-up duplex, a woman rocks back and forth, arms crossed, arguing with herself.