I have a new short story out from the excellent Apex Magazine, “DEMON FIGHTER SUCKS“, in Issue 123.
It’s the last story I sold before my mother died, and the first story to get published after she died. For a lot of reasons (particularly apparent if you read it) this work is important to me, and Apex Magazine did a great job with it.
Originally published on The Anna Katherine Co-op of Evil, April, 2012. “Anna Katherine” is the pseudonym of Anna Genoese and Katherine Crighton; this story is a prequel to the Door-world book SALT AND SILVER, 2009.
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Rian Corveau is fifteen years old. He lives about twenty minutes north of the border, speaks French better than he reads it (and he only does around his Quebecois family, anyway), loves hunting better than fishing, and has just had sex for the first time.
Michelle is six months older than him, and lives in town, and is so beautiful he doesn’t know words in enough languages for it. Her skin is the color of milk. Her lips are wide and thin around her mouth. Her laugh is rough and catches in the air when he tries to kiss along her skin like he’s seen in movies. She smells like spice and snow.
Everything, everything in the world, is amazing.
Continue reading “like fine print, so hard to read”Originally published on tumblr, February 2, 2015. Written for laurlovescookies.
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It was one of the house-party days, the ones when Alex pretended he had a grand salon, a modern-day Algonquin Round Table with himself firmly in the role of Dorothy Parker. Becca had come by, and Sadie, and a few of the old crowd from college and the new crowd from the gallery, before Alex had had to quit. Thom’s role on days like this was, generally, to keep the food coming and provide the occasional set-up lines for Alex’s wit.
Not so officially, and not so anyone would notice, Thom kept a careful eye on Alex, watching for when he was starting to flag so that guests could be directed gently out while the feeling of triumph was still high, before the exhaustion of the illness crept back in.
The ability to dismiss guests with aplomb was one of Thom’s more minor talents, compared to some of the other things he could do.
Continue reading “Fifty Silver Bells and Nine”
Katherine Crighton 