I recently spoke to From the Earth and the Stars, the Asimov’s Science Fiction blog, about my new story “The Albatwitch Chorus.” I confessed to things like:
This idea, like most of my ideas, came both quickly and slowly. When I learned about the albatwitch, a kind of mini-Sasquatch from Pennsylvania folklore, I knew I wanted to write about it. I like cryptids and have a weirdly specific phobia of uncanny, humanoid tricksters.
Read the whole interview here.
You can find my newest short story, “The Albatwitch Chorus,” in the Sept./Oct. issue of Asimov’s. It’s about a witch going through a midlife crisis, her ex-husband, her teenage intern, and the cryptids in her backyard:
“Possum?” I asked, but the wind shifted, revealing the body was too big. Curled hands and pointed black ears of a raccoon, but sparse fur and no tail. I had never seen one before, but I knew.
“Albatwitch,” Jonas said, his eyes still fixed on the creature. “Go call animal control.”
Very little scared me, yet I nodded mutely, hurried through the kitchen door, and stood at the window with a phone in hand. Albatwitches carried disease. They attracted predators. And they had mysterious funerary rites one did not want to interrupt. They mostly kept to themselves, but they were quick to retaliate, and usually as a chorus—that was the name for a group—at least, before the 1979 Treaty of Half Moon Rock, sealed with an exchange of apples (from us) and a mound of empty soda cans, a few nuggets of raw garnet, and a deer carcass (from them).
You can order print and digital subscriptions, purchase an eBook copy, or find the issue on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and a million other stores.