The Beast Of Primordial Fire

 I am very proud to announce that my story, The Beast Of Primordial Fire, is now available in Out Of The Darkness, an anthology with proceeds going to the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention.

My story is what I've been calling prehistoric mythology. It's fantastical and features a personified version of an abstract concept to explain why things are the way they are. I imagine it's the kind of story the main character and her descendants will tell around the campfire for years to come, exaggerating or forgetting details as is the way with oral tradition, until no one remembers what actually happened but everyone knows the moral of the story.

And, since I am me, the moral of the story could be condensed into "Life Finds A Way."

It's about evolution, not just in the sense that a species evolves, but the evolution of language and art and society as well. It's also about personal evolution, being scared and feeling small and helpless but letting yourself try to do great things anyway.

Content warnings include offscreen death, fear, and the hunting and killing of a mythological creature.

All I Want For Christmas Is UFO

 When I was little, we used to stay at my friend Amanda's for Christmas. One year, when I was maybe six or seven, I heard a big THUNK on the roof.

I wasn't even close to being asleep, no one else heard it, and if it was one of her parents or aunts and uncles trying to get us kids to believe it was Santa, they would not have been so subtle. So I don't know what it was, but to this day I still swear I heard something.

Which brings me to my story, All I Want For Christmas Is UFO, available now in Humor Me’s Christmas issue!

It’s the story of a little girl who decides it’s up to her to remind an amnesiac Santa about the magic of Christmas. There’s just one problem: it’s not Santa, it’s an alien who’s come to destroy Earth.

I wrote this story… gosh, I don’t even know when. At least six years ago, before I ever had a story published. And I never submitted it anywhere in all those years.

I liked it. I just knew it wasn’t ready, something was off.

When I finally went to edit it this year, I realized that the story was good, but I didn’t have a great grasp on the humor I was trying to use. Now that I’m more comfortable writing in “my style” of humor, I was able to make the story really feel like I originally wanted:

An outrageously ridiculous concept written as if the main character is oblivious to the inanity, with sarcastic comments from the slightly Douglas-Adams-inspired narrator with an oddly heartwarming message.

So happy holidays or lack thereof, and I hope you enjoy.

If That Cowbird Don't Sing

 My story If That Cowbird Don't Sing is now available in Penumbric!

It's about being autistic and magical, growing up knowing you don't belong, and realizing the one person you're supposed to rely on is unreliable.

And from the time I thought of the idea until I submitted the final story, it was less than 12 hours.

It was for an anthology originally, although the project was canceled. On the day submissions closed, I had a story mostly finished. And then I realized it was supposed to be a horror story and my story… was not.

So I figured I wouldn't have a story to submit.

… and then around noon, I had an idea. I wrote nonstop, I had coffee with dinner so I could stay awake to finish it. And even though the anthology was it actually canceled, they did originally want my story. That will always be a huge accomplishment for me, going from blank page to finished and publishable in less than 12 hours.

***

The story itself is based on brood parasitism—in which birds trick other species into raising their offspring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_parasite)—, the Carly Simon song Mockingbird, and my experiences growing up with an abusive mother who did not understand my autism.

The Care Home

 First, some news! My story Darken The Corners Of My Mind is nominated for the Brave New Weird Award! I am honored to have my weird little story included among the finalists.

Now, for today's story.

The Care Home, available in Dark Matter Magazine, is the story of a disabled woman fighting her smart home for control of her life.

It's also the story of how I escaped my abusive mother.

Oh yes, it's a metaphor. On purpose this time.

I won't so much to spoil it, but the conversation at the end that she has with the man? That's basically exactly what happened with me. Not word for word, but that was the conversation I had with the police that day when my mother was trying to convince them everything was fine.

So yeah. Be aware of emotional abuse and manipulation, but I hope you enjoy my story. Because it is my story, as much as it is my main character's.

Barely Even Friends To Lovers

 This is a story for the weirdos.

For the children of the 80s and 90s who grew up with independent, freethinking heroines who didn't need a man but still fell in love at the end of the story because True Love is the answer to everything.

For the kids who had a crush on Fox Robin Hood and that uncomfortably sexy Tim Curry pollution from Ferngully, who strongly believe the prince was way hotter when he was a Beast.

For the confused and disappointed dreamers who became fanfiction writers so they could fix all of their beloved media.

This is my version of Beauty and the Beast, where transforming into a hot guy is truly a disappointment, where love is good but not the answer to everything, and where you never click on the folder that says West Wing.

This is Barely Even Friends To Lovers, available now in Strangely Funny IX.

Other Peoples Tsunamis

 In France in 1518, hundreds of people were overcome by a dancing plague. They danced for weeks, some of them collapsing from exhaustion and—according to some accounts—dying.

This is a true historical event.

We still don't know what caused it, or the other similar events recorded throughout history, but myself and eight other authors have a few ideas.

The Dancing Plague is a collection of stories presenting unique theories as to the origin of the mysterious event.

My story, Other Peoples Tsunamis, is a tale of magic, autism, and just a touch of chaos theory. It was also based on the soundtrack to the movie Flashdance.

It's also set in the same world as The Repatriation Heist, my contribution to Five Minutes At Hotel Stormcove, although the stories are not connected in any way. Both of them have autistic witches working with an agency to use their unique perspectives on magic to keep the world safe; in The Repatriation Heist, the focus is on spirits, not preserving the timeline, although I like to think the characters work for the same agency, just different branches.

Peaches, Wishes, And Something Like Motherhood

 Before I get to announcing my most recent publication, I wanted to remind people that Mighty: An Anthology Of Disabled Superheroes is currently open for submissions! We've already gotten several submissions and it just makes me so happy that my weird little idea is actually happening, and more people like me are going to see themselves in superhero media.

Now. Today's story.

Peaches, Wishes, And Something Like Motherhood, available in Let's Get Weird, is my take on the Japanese folktale Momotaro.

It's about the difficulties of building a family when you're in a queer relationship. Especially when the fertility clinic is ground zero for the alien invasion and the world is ending.

But it's also about hope and making life find a way even if it doesn't seem possible. It's about holding on and letting go.

It's about lesbians raising a baby alien they found in the river.

The Endless Night at Promontory Summit

So there was a weird western anthology call, and my friend said “What if I wrote a story based on the Bon Jovi song Dead or Alive, but instead of a six string guitar, it was a six shooter gun?”

"And I could do the same thing with Summer of 69, but instead of 1969, it's 1869," I said, joking.

… I should know by now that when I joke about things like that, I'm not actually joking.

I wrote my story, he didn't write his, and I didn't get into the anthology anyway. But I’m proud to say "The Endless Night At Promontory Summit" has found a home in Queer Weird West Tales!

It's a little bit Twilight Zone, a little bit Supernatural, and a little bit coming of age romance, set during the summer the Transcontinental Railroad was finished.

I hope you enjoy it.

Davy Bones and the Domestication of the Dutchman

 Ahoy me hearties! I've got a pirating tail for you today. Yes, tail is spelled correctly, because my pirates are dogs. In fact, so are all the pirates in the recently published anthology Pirating Pups!

My story, Davy Bones and the Domestication of the Dutchman, takes place in a world where global warming has flooded the planet and humans are little more than a cultural memory passed down through each generation of pirate dogs.

It's a ghost story, a story about unfinished business, and a story about the importance of having a crew on those cold and lonely nights out at sea.

Several "Mighty" Announcements

 With great powerchair comes great responsibility…

Or something like that.

Anyway, announcement time!

This Friday at 5 PM eastern, I will be part of a panel with other authors, reading from and talking about our stories in the Pirating Pups anthology at When Worlds Collide! (it came out today, I will have another proper announcement after [gestures at the chaos] is over)

And then on Sunday at 1 PM eastern, please join me and some friends as we talk about disability in superhero media on a panel Tyche Books has graciously helped me put together.

For more information about the con, and to register for free for these and many more panels, click here!

Finally, and I will be talking about this a lot more during the submission window and editing process, but…

Along with my co-editor Emily Gillespie, I am going to be editing MIGHTY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF DISABLED SUPERHEROES for Renaissance Press! We will be opening for submissions in September, but you can check out our submission call here.

I'll be talking a lot more about the importance of disabled superheroes in particular in the coming months, but I wanted to talk a little bit about my connection to superheroes in general.

I didn't grow up a sci-fi nerd. Neither of my parents were really into it. I'd watch The Twilight Zone marathons on every holiday, and it was drilled into my head from a young age that Michael Keaton is the only Batman we recognize in my family, but that was about it.

The few superhero movies I watched when I was little, I couldn't really get into them.

But as I grew up, I realized that the world saw me as different no matter how much I tried to convince them I was just like them. I realized my parents, the only people I could trust, weren't people I could trust. And this coincided with a couple things that changed everything:

My mom randomly said "Hey, you've never seen Star Wars" while flipping through channels one day, and I was instantly in love with science fiction. And we started hanging out with her friends who had a ton of superhero movies on DVD and would let me watch whatever I wanted.

And suddenly, superheroes made sense. Because sometimes your mentor, the one person you think you can trust, is secretly trying to take control of the things that are important to you. And sometimes just being different is reason enough for people to want to take away your rights or even your life.

(Yeah, I started with the first Iron Man and the X-Men movies.)

My love for these movies has spiraled from there. More than half my T-shirts feature some super powered character (I'm wearing one of my Iron Man shirts as we speak), I've seen every MCU movie in theaters that has come out in the last three years, and the very first time I cried at a movie was at the end of Avengers Endgame because, as my friend teased me, they killed off my "first love."

So yeah. These movies bring me comfort. Inspiration. The last time I had to stay in the hospital overnight, I snuggled up under my blankets and watched Thor while I waited to hear if I would be OK.

Being able to be part of bringing disabled representation into the world of superhero media is just a dream come true for me. I can't wait to see what new heroes I’m going to be cheering for in this book.

Don't Cry For Me Argentinosaurus

 I am very happy to announce that my story "Don't Cry For Me Argentinosaurus" is now available in volume one of The Mesozoic Reader!

This story is part of what I am jokingly calling the Jennifer Lee Rossman Cinematic Universe, a shared universe where several of my stories take place in different time periods.

There are two other stories published in this universe: The Good, The Bad, And The Utahraptor, and Joan Of Archaeopteryx. And I am planning, in the very distant future, to put together these stories with a bunch of others to more completely tell the full story of this world.

Argentinosaurus is very loosely based on the musical Evita. Very very loosely. I want to stress that I have never seen Evita. Mostly I just based the story on the Madonna song and added dinosaurs.

Set The Night To Music

 Set The Night To Music, also known as the reason Spotify keeps suggesting I listen to Starship, is now available in Triangulation: Energy!

This is a cyberpunk story based on the song "We Built This City," which I listened to over and over again while writing it, to the point that I totally messed up my Spotify algorithm. But it's also a story that made me realize some common themes in my work.

Music.

Reluctant heroes.

The little people rising up to defeat the big corporations.

And it's hard to know where these recurring ideas come from, why they’re so important to us that they keep showing up. A lot of my work is directly inspired by the lessons about life and science that I absorbed from Jurassic Park. But that last one, little people rising up to defeat big corporations?

Well… as I was writing this story, I found myself humming a little tune. No, not We Built This City. I couldn't identify it at first, I only remember the words "You can't fight corporate America."

So I looked it up, and it was this song from Rocko’s Modern Life, a cartoon I watched when I was little. I can't say for sure that that song is the only reason the idea of getting together a big unruly mob and fighting against corporations has become such a big part of who I am, but it's definitely one of them.

Seven Things I Learned Traveling Through Space With A Genetically Engineered Lesbian Peahen

 I’m so honored to say that my story "Seven Things I Learned Traveling Through Space With A Genetically Engineered Lesbian Peahen" has been published alongside a shipload (wink wink) of other spaceship-set stories in Bridge To Elsewhere!

The story was inspired by Real Science! According to this article, peafowl can sense each other’s tail vibrations with the lil doodlebopper feathers on their heads.

So naturally, I'm using them as long range communication in space.

I do not understand how that would work, do not ask me.

Also do not ask my character.

I used one of my favorite literary techniques for this story: the main character who has no idea how the science works so I don't have to explain anything.

This character in particular is best imagined as Darcy Lewis, Kat Denning’s character from the Thor movies.

The Twinkle Of A Fading Star

 My very short story The Twinkle Of A Fading Star is now available in the June 2022 issue of The Quiet Ones!

The theme of this issue (available for free on the website) was post-apocalyptic pride. The magazine also said in the submission guidelines that they like "Quiet horror." Somehow, the juxtaposition of those ideas led me to The Hollow Men by TS Eliot.

Even if you don't know the poem, you've probably heard the ending:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

That kind of exemplified the idea of a quiet apocalypse to me, and while I enjoy the imagery and metaphors TS Eliot used to describe the bleak hopelessness of war (or his marriage, according to some people), I don't really interact with poetry on a metaphorical level. That isn't the way my brain works. I take things very literally.

So I… Took the poem very literally, and somehow I ended up with a world where people die and come back as destructive ghosts unless you build a scarecrow for them to inhabit, and a dying transgender woman trying to build gender affirming scarecrows before it's too late.

It's dark, and it touches on the terrifying idea of what happens when you're trans and your unsupportive family is left in charge of your funeral and remains. But I think it's hopeful, too. I hope it is.

How Do You Do, Fellow Chosen Ones?

 Sometimes my stories are meaningful and deep and inspirational. Sometimes they are just delightful nonsense. "How Do You Do, Fellow Chosen Ones?" available in audio and text from Tall Tale TV, is definitely in the delightful nonsense category.

I don't remember exactly why I decided I needed to write a fantasy story based on the How do you do, fellow kids? meme in which Steve Buscemi spectacularly fails at pretending to be a young person. I just know I found a couple paragraphs of a story with the title "How Do You Do, Fellow Chosen Ones?" I had written a couple years before, and I decided I needed to finish it.

So there's this prophecy, right? And this modern day questing party has been tasked with finding the boy mentioned in the prophecy, triggering his innate Chosen One Powers, and defeating the bad guy. No problem, right?

Well, one problem. The witch who was supposed to trigger his powers… she kind of… gave herself the powers by mistake and decided that instead of admitting to this failure, she would just pretend to be the chosen one.

She is not convincing, as he is a teenage boy and she is a middle aged woman, and no one is fooled. But she's the only option they have right now, so they might as well try it.

The Moon Rabbit

 The original file name of the story that became The Moon Rabbit—now available in Prismatic Dreams—was ET The Extra Transgender, so that should give you an idea of what you're in for with this story.

When I was watching ET for the first time in years, I noticed it could be seen as a transgender narrative. (Read my live tweet here.)

Somehow, that idea evolved into a story where magic is gendered and a young person on the cusp of puberty fears they’ll get the feminine magic because they were assigned female at birth. But then they meet the moon rabbit…

(I acknowledge that this is not my culture and I may have gotten some details wrong when talking about the myth. I am not claiming it is incredibly accurate, and neither is my character. The story is set a little ways into the future and they admit the details may have been changed in translation or amalgamated with other myths passed down from their Chinese and Vietnamese side of the family.)

I use some of the plot points from ET, but a lot of it is meant as a metaphor for gender dysphoria and being afraid of having to go through the wrong puberty.

I don't think I ever say whether the main character is a binary trans boy or nonbinary. They refer to themselves as a boy, but also express interest in having bits of magic from both sides.

Gender is weird and confusing, especially if you're just figuring it out. I don't think my main character really knows what they identity as quite yet, and that’s okay. They’re sure they aren’t a girl, at least not completely, but other than that, labels aren't as important to them as feeling comfortable in their body is.

Maiasaura Deifaeria

 Hey, do you want to cry about dinosaurs!? Then do I have a story for you! Maiasaura Deifaeria is now available in Luna Station Quarterly!

So, full disclosure: this story breaks my rule about not killing off animal characters. I am comfortable breaking that rule in this instance for two reasons:

*While she is a dinosaur, the story depicts her and her godmother as having very human like intelligence and emotions. They may have different views of the world and their place in it because they are dinosaurs, but in a story sense, they serve the same purpose as human characters. It isn't like I am killing off a character's pet just for shock value, I am writing about the death of a character who happens to also be a dinosaur.

*Her death is not a surprise, nor is it used just to make another character sad. This is a story about grief and moving on, and while Asha is alive in flashbacks and her death is not described on the page, we know she is dead before we ever meet her.

Maiasaura Deifaeria (that’s "dinosaur fairy godmother" in Latin, at least to the best of my abilities) is about a fairy godmother triceratops who never got a chance to grant her last hatchling's wish before they went extinct, and she has not been able to move on from her grief for 65 million years.

It's sad and it's hopeful, and it references the real life Bone Wars, which led to some amazing discoveries and also undoubtedly caused the destruction of invaluable fossil specimens.

Because that's the way life is, isn't it? Nothing is ever all good or all bad, and bad people do good things and good people make bad decision sometimes. But you can't wait around for something to magically change, you just have to do your best with what you have and hope it's enough.

This is one of my favorite stories I've ever written and it has a ridiculous concept and serious emotions and I just… I love it, and I hope you will, too.

Handwritten Recipes: Excerpts From A Post-Apocalyptic Cookbook

 Have you ever looked for a recipe online, only to find yourself scrolling past a long personal story about the origin and meaning of the recipe before you even get to the ingredients? Handwritten Recipes: Excerpts From A Post-Apocalyptic Cookbook is a story told through those recipe introductions.

Available in the absolutely massive anthology Grandpa's Deep-Space Diner (seriously y'all, it's over 600 pages long), Handwritten Recipes weaves together stories about the main character's family with her own apocalyptic journey to see her grandmother and finally learned how to make all of the recipes that have been passed down over the generations.

The entire idea of the story is about how surviving isn't enough. Sometimes you need to thrive, sometimes you need to treat yourself even though you're struggling to make ends meet. It's about how putting in a little extra work to make a good meal instead of getting something cheap and premade and easy can make a difference in the way you feel.

That theme came easy to me. I come from several generations of people who pride themselves on being cheap, and even when I have money, it's a struggle to splurge on something nice for myself. But it is important and it does make all the difference sometimes. It's the difference between feeding the stomach and feeding the soul, to quote my main character's grandmother.

I don't have a lot of personal stories about family recipes and traditions. The one recipe that does have a story, it's not even the entire recipe:

My uncle Bob made an amazing pot roast. Everyone loved it. So my mom asked for his recipe and she made it, and apparently it was good but it was not Bob's Pot Roast. She asked him what she did wrong, and went over how she made it, and he remembered another ingredient that he forgot to tell her last time.

She tried again. Still not right. Every time she asked him about it, he remembered more ingredients. She was convinced he was doing it on purpose to avoid giving out his recipe, and she isn't sure she ever got the full list of ingredients during his lifetime. She still calls it Bob's Pot Roast, but it's not.

There are no actual recipes in Handwritten Recipes, just stories and advice about surviving and thriving and feeding the soul.

Contains mentions of death, and the end of the world.

Pick up your copy of Grandpa's Deep-Space Diner here.

Darken The Corners Of My Mind

 Darken The Corners Of My Mind, a very short and odd story, is now available at The Arcanist!

I don't want to say much about the story because there's not much to say without spoiling it, so I will tell you about the dream that inspired it.

There was a person with no memories of their own. They had plenty of memories, just… stolen memories. Every time they touched someone, they would take away a memory and it would become their own.

Their life was a mosaic of pieced together glimpses of lives that were not their own. They didn't know who they were or where they were or even know what they were doing at any given time.

They could look at a building, but by the time their brain interpreted what they saw, the information taken in by their eyes was technically a memory from a few milliseconds ago. So instead of the building they were actually looking at, their brain supplied stolen memories of similar buildings.

Even walking down the street, their steps were not their own. They could look at their feet, but they would see sneakers one step, high heels the next. They would only know they were cold because they remembered the chilly wind of a blizzard a decade ago, or the feeling of putting a hand in the refrigerator in another country.

The dream was not dark. In fact, the big conflict involved accidentally stealing the memory of how to make a really good grilled cheese sandwich.

… that's where my story differs. My story is dark. It mentions death, nonconsensual medical tests, and being held against their will in a government facility.

Spider Horse

Spider horse, spider horse,

mythological and Norse,

many legs, many feets,

mom is Loki, that is neat,

Look out, here comes spider horse!

Last year, I tweeted that silly little song, which is a reference to one of the Norse trickster god Loki's children, Sleipnir the eight legged horse. And then hundreds of people retweeted it, and somehow that led to me being able to say…

My latest short story "Spider Horse" is now available in Untethered, an anthology edited by Rhonda Parrish!

As far as I could tell, the original mythology only deals with Loki shape shifting into a horse to conceive Sleipnir, making no mention of whether she stayed to raise him. So I took a few creative liberties.

"Spider Horse" shows Sleipnir being raised by his unsympathetic father, who often mocks his extra legs. So he decides to go find his mother who he decides must be a spider.

The Princess and the P. Sativum

 My transgender plant witch story "The Princess and the P. Sativum" is now available in Xenocultivars: Stories Of Queer Growth!

This is one of those stories that I 100% wrote just because I loved the title.

When I saw the call for submissions, I was considering writing an autistic take on The Princess And The Pea. That story has always felt autistic coded to me. Exactly where queerness was going to fit in, I wasn't sure yet. But I would figure it out.

And because I'm me, I can’t write about anything without researching the heck out of all associated topics. So that led me to learning about the pea plant. Or Pisum sativum, to use the Latin name—

And that's when it hit me. Pisum sativum. P. sativum. I could make a pun!

I'm pretty sure my main character is still autistic, but the story is more about her being transgender and what it means to finally be able to decide for yourself what you are and what you aren’t.

The Kraken Heist

Do you like adventures on the high seas? What about awkward trans boys? Adorable sea monsters named Timothy?

Than I would like to introduce you to my story "The Kraken Heist," now available in Runs Like Clockwork!

This very queer steampunk love story/heist stars Dax, who used to think he was a gay girl growing up in fancy high society but now he’s run away on a boat to start a new life because he's pretty sure he’s a man who likes to kiss girls and other not-men people. He’s also pretty sure he’s not very good at being a man, but it’s only been a few days so give him a break okay.

Dax is my precious little awkward queer baby.

He’s also got prosthetic legs that have not adjusted to life on a boat, giving him one more reason to hate boats.

Oh yeah, and he is… dun dun dunnn… a thief! At least, he will be, once he tricks the very pretty Sandrine into giving him the key to the tank containing his target: a baby kraken.

Sure would be real inconvenient if he were to get a crush on Sandrine, eh? (hint hint)

The Kraken Heist is genuinely one of my favorite stories I’ve ever written. It deals with queer identity and exploring nontoxic masculinity, and the idea that a woman doesn’t have to be "feminine" to be a woman, but I don't think any of my characters actually label their sexuality or gender identity other than Dax wondering if he is still gay now that he is a man who likes women.

There’s a parallel to be made about labels and words in the way Dax talks about boats. It was totally unintentional, in fact I only really noticed it today, but just because it is not intentional doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it:

Dax hates boats. There are a lot of reasons, but one of them is the fact that boats have a whole separate, seemingly unnecessary and made up vocabulary for things. Why does left suddenly need to be called port just because you’re on a boat?

So he doesn’t make that much of an effort to learn boat words. He just says what he means: boat luggage, boat driveway, boat porch. Just like he describes himself: a man who has breasts (manly ones, he points out), someone who likes to kiss people who aren't men.

It’s simple to him, not something that needs to be explained or necessarily given a name. It's just a part of who he is, and that should be enough.

Nesting — Free Poetry Reprint

 Nesting originally appeared in Multiverse, an anthology of science fiction poetry.

Nesting

I didn't say anything when you started hoarding marbles

when I found Christmas baubles in my shoes

or glass eyes in the silverware drawer.

I know you have a need to decorate our home like a bower bird

That's how your species says

"I love you"

I kept my mouth shut when you escalated to beach balls

and filling the bathroom with balloons

Earth boys show their love with candy and flowers

You put a human hamster ball in the kitchen

I was okay with that because

I love you

But this has simply gone too far

What will the neighbors say?

I will not have the dwarf planet Pluto in my backyard

Put it back where you found it

Bring chocolate instead

I love you

Personal Reflections On Bloody Mary

My story Personal Reflections On Bloody Mary is now available to read for free in Trembling With Fear, on The Horror Tree.

 For best results, please imagine this story being read by Owen Wilson.

I tried to write this story several times. I knew the basic plot and the twist at the end, I even knew I didn't really want to develop the characters much, I just wanted to have the story describe what is happening to them.

But it just wasn't working out… until I decided to write it as if it was narrated by Owen Wilson.

I have no idea why this idea even came into my head. I mean, I do. It's because I absolutely loved his character in Loki, and his unique way of talking just kind of found a place in my heart. But I have no idea why I decided I needed to write a horror story in his voice.

But I did anyway. And it was so much easier to write in a really colloquial and folksy style (my phone tried to dictate that as foxy, and… I mean, that's not wrong I guess) if I stopped thinking about "how should I write this" and started thinking about "if Owen Wilson was sitting on a porch in a rocking chair, telling a spooky story in his really casual, Southern way, how would he say this?"

So that's my writing advice for the day. If the story is good but writing it isn't working out, pick an actor with a unique way of speaking and pretend you are writing the story for them to narrate.

About the actual story:

It's atmospherically spooky but nothing too terrifying happens. Kind of a psychological horror more than anything. And Bloody Mary. But besides a sort of psychological and existential horror, I don't think I need to put any content warnings. Nothing bad happens to the dog, blood is mentioned hypothetically but not actually in the story.

I'm really excited to be published on The Horror Tree. I've been going to that site for years to find submission calls and it's been a great resource.

So I hope you enjoy Personal Reflections On Bloody Mary, and I especially hope you read it in the voice of Owen Wilson.