Saturnalia is about many things, but one of its core questions is about how women navigate their ambition in a world that doesn’t want them to achieve. For Lit Hub, I considered my own relationship with ambition, and seven more novels about women’s dark struggles with ambition, identity, and success.
As a writer and reader, I find joy in destruction as well as triumph. If you’re a woman, you can’t win without breaking the rules.
Just in time for Halloween season, I’m pleased to share this list of five scary novels that make the most of their settings. They exemplify how integral place is to great fiction; immerse readers in complex communities; and are creepy in classic and surprising ways. This list includes new titles and new classics, with authors and stories that span the Americas and Europe.
Today, Uncharted Magazine, one of my favorite genre publishes, released the first in my craft capsule essay series, “Writing Saturnalia.” I learned so much about plot, pace, and world-building by writing this book, and as a teacher, I’ve spent the last seven years thinking deeply about how we shape narrative. I’m excited to share this project, my first formal reflections on craft.
The first entry, “A Story Launch Thrives on an Easy Target,” explores how to use focused beginnings and clear stakes without diminishing ambitious story inquiries.
Saturnalia is about a lot of things: climate anxiety, social class, friendship and secrets, gender and power, the American city—as well as alchemy, secret societies, monsters, and pagan carnivals. All of the issues that matter to me, to us, and all of the trappings that make for a fun and atmospheric tale. My main character, Nina, grapples with society in decline, trauma, and the eternal puzzle of who she can trust.
But when the story begins, her problems and goals are simple.
Read more at Uncharted Magazine.
I’m pleased to share a new story, “Beneath Human Skin,” which appears in Khôra Issue 18 (October 2022). This is a rare story that doesn’t incorporate the supernatural, but I also think it’s one of my scarier pieces–here just in time for Halloween season. Here’s a little excerpt:
The cemetery gates were in sight when she heard another voice.
“Got bored?”
It was a man, sitting on the lip of one of the tombs. He had curly hair and a curly beard, both the color of lead — a shade that could have been gray or black. He was short, wiry, with shoulders that bulged in his t-shirt and veins that bulged on his forearms. She couldn’t guess his age; as he smiled, deep grooves descended from his eyes, but he was also ferociously tanned.
“Something like that,” Alicia said.
He stepped forward, held his palm open. She took a step forward, too.
It was a stick of gum.
“I don’t take candy from strangers.”
“Ha,” he said, and winked at her. He stuck the gum in his mouth and the wrapper in the pocket of his painter’s pants. “You’re a tourist.”
Read the rest at Khôra online.