Past and upcoming fiction
Short Stories
“Just a Regular Man”
(Shortlisted for the Uncharted Magazine Horror Challenge January 2025.)
“You ever been hypnotized?“
“Last Great Artist of Moscow” - The New Orleans Review, December 2023
(One of twelve finalists in the 2022 Driftwood Press In-House Short Story Contest.)
“There’s nothing lonelier than breakfast on a broken heart, so Yuri’d gone to work hungry. A real starving artist, just like that asshole Stepan had wanted.“
“Shorn” - NiftyLit, June 2023
“The first time I lied to Leah was pure accident. She sat in the living room, romance novel covering her face, when I walked in with no intention of hiding a damn thing. I stood there like a tower, a lighthouse, shining over everything Leah swore she loved in a man – and I was fixing to confess that last week I’d joined a knitting circle.“
“Black Hole Elvis” - Bourbon Penn, March 2022
“The first time mama and I did shrooms together, we were listening to Elvis. If there was ever a mascot for the hell crater of the west that is Vegas, then his warbling ghost would be it. Trust me, I’d know. The last time mama and I did shrooms together, we met the guy.”
“Such a Peach” - Typehouse Literary Magazine, January 2021
(A quarterfinalist in the Adrift Short Story Competition at Driftwood Press in October 2020 and the inspiration for Shell Jonsson’s short film.)
“The morning after Lina disappeared was a dance between pressing my coffee mug against my forehead and sobbing into her Wild Turkey t-shirt.”
“Swan Song” - Wild Musette Journal of Music, Mystery, and Myth, April 2018
This now-defunct journal has my heart as the first place to publish my fiction <3. RIP.
Novel Projects
The Year We Got Away
Winner of the 2024 Pulp Literature First Page Cage novel competition, finalist for the 2023 Elizabeth George Grants, and first great literary love of my life.
“With only one night left in this stupid town, you'd best believe Dot was going to make the most of it. She'd spent the past three years cooped up in her attic bedroom, all "yes ma'ams" and "no ma'ams," one goal in mind: getting the hell away from the rest of the McIlroys. Now, tomorrow’s one-way train ticket to Los Angeles tucked in her desk drawer, what did a girl have to lose? Less than twenty-four hours til freedom meant practically free already, or so Dot told herself, which was why she was presently downing the dregs of her whiskey in the kind of bar folks don't name on purpose, thigh-deep in either the stupidest or most genuine thing she'd done in years: accepting Moon's invitation to dance.”
Full Moon Cornbread
Current baby - The Hobbit meets Wild West witches and brothels.
“The main drag of Missed Stop was empty, but if Maggie closed her eyes, she could almost hear Lou’s horse galloping down the dirt that counted for Main Street, the creak of leather as he pulled to a stop outside her café and hitched his horse at the porch, right there beyond the door threshold where she stood. The mug of coffee she cradled was so hot her palms burned, high and bright, but she didn’t move, not even when the wind whipped against her cheek. She clutched the image of her cocky, idiot brother coming home safe til it seared her eyelids, clear as a daguerreotype.”
Keep an eye out for this one - it’s going places!