Category: writing

Ruins Speculative Fiction Zine

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

My newest zine, Ruins, collects seven illustrated pieces of speculative short fiction about the people and places left behind after the world has moved on. 

“Ruins” is a theme that’s near and dear to my heart for two reasons.

The first has to do with the spaces I occupy both in my imagination and in real life. I’m a big fan of dark fantasy video games, which often involve exploring gorgeously ruined spaces. In the real world, I live in a part of Philadelphia that has a bold culture and a strong sense of community, but its infrastructure has definitely seen better days. Over the course of a normal day, I pass by (and occasionally through) multiple abandoned structures. Both in video games and in my own neighborhood, seeing those sorts of spaces makes me want to know their stories.

The second reason is more personal. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but the Covid pandemic was nothing short of apocalyptic for me. For reasons beyond my control, almost everything in my life was destroyed suddenly and without warning. I survived and rebuilt, of course. Still, it would be difficult to say that I’m not haunted by the ruins of everything that ended just a few years ago.

As a writer of speculative fiction, it’s therefore not so much the apocalypse that interests me, but rather what comes after. Even when the world ends, life is still well worth living. What I wanted to do with the stories in Ruins is to share my experience of the chaotic joy of transition and the gentle beauty of decay. Though the stories are told from the perspective of a variety of human and inhuman narrators who have found themselves in strange circumstances, I hope that a sense of calm and quiet optimism shines through their words.

Paper copies of the zine are available on Etsy, and you can download a free digital version from Itch.io here:

🌿 https://digitalterrarium.itch.io/ruins-zine
🌿 https://www.etsy.com/listing/4485202424/ruins-speculative-fiction-zine

I also want to give a shout to Dinchen, who created to beautiful pixel art for the zine’s front cover. Dinchen takes commissions via VGen (here), and links to all of their socials are on their Carrd site (here). Many thanks and much love also to RainbowPhilosopher, who created the atmospheric painting on the zine’s back cover. You can find links to her socials and her portfolio on DeviantArt (here), and she’s active on Instagram (here). I’m very honored to have been able to work with such friendly and talented artists!

The Annotated Kitab al-Azif on The New Absurdist

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I’m excited to announce that my short story “The Annotated Kitab al-Azif” is free to read on The New Absurdist here:

📖 https://newabsurdist.com/editors-picks/the-annotated-kitab-al-azif/

“The Annotated Kitab al-Azif” is a queer Lovecraftian romance about the slow decline of American academia and the supernatural perils of translation. In this story, a burnt-out Millennial podcaster flees the high rent of Boston and accepts a position as a departmental admin assistant in the suburban Miskatonic University, which is suffering from budget cuts and declining enrollments. During the lull of his first summer on the job, the podcaster meets a grad student working on the Gnostic religious traditions of the southern Mediterranean while attempting a translation of the Kitab al-Azif, more popularly known as the Necronomicon.

As you might imagine, this area of study has consequences for the grad student. The podcaster isn’t too concerned, however. He’s already seen all manner of awful things while doing research online, and why let something as trivial as ageless extradimensional horrors get in the way of a budding relationship?

Though I’ve never accidentally summoned an eldritch abomination, the setting of “The Annotated Kitab al-Azif” is partially based on my own experience as a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania. The “horror” part of this experience is the constant scramble for funding, the awkward negotiations with libraries for access to research material, and the unspoken expectation that you’ll work in decaying buildings that haven’t been maintained since the early twentieth century.

Meanwhile, the “romance” part is the opportunity to share space with people from all over the world. When you use the same office (and the same refrigerator and bathroom) with other people, pre-existing differences in culture, language, and nationality quickly become secondary to the warmth of the personal relationships that form between you. Universities aren’t cultural melting pots by any means, but they’re as good of a place as any to realize that cultural differences really don’t matter all that much in the face of genuine friendship.

Though I’ve largely set aside my ambitions to become a translator, one of the reasons I got into academia was to model the positive change I wanted to see in the broader field of literary studies, especially with regards to de-mystifying stories written by authors from “non-Western” countries. Even when it’s done respectfully, the academic tendency to treat these stories as “subaltern” and “marginalized” is frustrating. To begin with, nobody thinks of their own language and culture as “other”; but, more importantly, people are just people.   

The Necronomicon is an interesting base for an exploration of this theme. In my understanding of the lore of the Cthulhu mythos, the Necronomicon is essentially an expression of popular turn-of-the-century Spiritualism, which was in turn inspired by the various strands of medieval Gnostic thought that sprung up along the Silk Road.

Though this sort of spiritually inclusive worldview may have seemed “mystical” to people living in Christian-majority cultures in the late nineteenth century, it’s completely normal to someone coming from a Buddhist or a Hindu tradition. All things considered, the cyclical view of time and the multidimensional view of space suggested by the Necronomicon are completely normal for many people who weren’t raised as Christian, and it’s interesting to consider the real-world foundations of this infamous fictional text without the narrative trappings of Orientalism.

But also…… What if magic were genuinely real? What then?

I’m grateful to The New Absurdist for taking a chance on this odd piece of weird fiction. I also want to express my appreciation to the story’s cover artists, Katie Rejto and Wally Tigerland, for creating such a unique and intriguing illustration.

If your curiosity is piqued by the prospect of true-to-life dark academia haunted by a touch of cosmic horror, please check out my story on The New Absurdist (here).

Green Dreams: Tales of Botanical Fantasy

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I’m excited to announce that I published a new zine! Green Dreams: Tales of Botanical Fantasy collects six illustrated stories about our relationships with plants and nature.

“Each turn of the seasons brings an end to lives both large and small, but new seeds sprout joyously from the ruins” is the zine’s tagline, and disaster is a major theme of the collection. One of the opening stories is about the gradual effects of climate change; and, in the closing story, environmental catastrophes have become so severe that humans have disappeared completely. The zine also features stories about a medical tragedy narrowly averted, the aftermath of a devastating war, and a porous biological quarantine.

I considered subtitling the zine “Tales of Botanical Dark Fantasy,” but the truth is that none of the stories are actually that “dark.” In fact, I’d say the main theme of the collection is a persistent hope for the future. At this particular moment in history, the state of the world seems very bleak, so it’s good to remember that the environment that surrounds us is much larger – but also much more personal – than whatever horrors are currently unfolding.

Precisely because are so many fires burning in the world, I think it’s important to spend time in thriving green spaces that suggest futures of shifting and changing growth. I believe that a mindful contemplation of our natural environment can also be useful in the uncomfortable but necessary process of decentering normative humanity while challenging the artificial divisions we impose on ourselves and each other.

The incredible cover art by Frankiesbugs captures the mood of these stories perfectly.

Frankie creates bold and imaginative botanical fantasy art, and I asked them to illustrate the pagan archetypes of the flower maiden and the horned god, who together represent the endless natural cycle of death and rebirth. In this zine, I wanted to play with symbols that convey the beauty and mystery of the natural world, and Frankie embraced this theme, tinging the painting with potent Christian motifs and a powerful sense of fertility.

It’s an extremely impressive piece of art, and you to check out more of the artist’s work on Instagram (here), on Bluesky (here), and on Redbubble (here).

In this collection, I did my best to share a sense of fertile “green dreams” for the future. Mostly, though, I just really wanted to write some fun ecofiction about plants and mushrooms.

If you’re interested, you can read a free digital version of the zine on Itch.io or order a print copy from Etsy.

🌿 https://digitalterrarium.itch.io/green-dreams
🌿 https://www.etsy.com/listing/4351990958/green-dreams-fantasy-fiction-zine

Miaow: A Cat Zine

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I’m excited to share a charmingly cozy and delightfully fluffy murder mystery story with Miaow: A Cat Zine. All proceeds from this digital zine will be donated to RAPS Cat Sanctuary, and preorders are open until September 5.

You can learn more about the zine and order a copy on their site here:
https://miaowzine.carrd.co/

The story I contributed to the zine, “Angus and Peaches Get Away with Murder,” is about two cats who do exactly what the title suggests, but it’s also about two pairs of humans – the two women who benefit from a wealthy man’s death, and the two freelance detectives who investigate the incident. As much as I appreciate lone-wolf genius criminals, I thought it would be fun to write a story in which every character conspires in the murder in some fashion.

The two nameless detectives are modeled on Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, whom I’ve brought forward into the twentieth century. Something I’ve always admired about Sherlock Holmes is his strong sense of compassion, which occasionally overrules his sense of justice. There are a number of cases (“A Scandal in Bohemia” is my favorite) in which he allows the person who committed a crime to get away with it if he believes this will be the best outcome. I really enjoyed writing the scene in this story where the Holmes character just kind of shrugs and says, “What are you going to do, try a cat for murder?”

What he doesn’t know is that Angus and Peaches are unrepentant fiends, and that they would happily get away with murder again. I love all cats on this earth, but I truly believe that this is the sort of creature they are. Cats are all tiny little devils, and that’s one of the many things I admire about them.

The Sleeping Princess

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There is a legend in Hyrule that a sleeping princess lies behind the door of a locked room deep under the ruins of the North Castle. When the princess rises, so too will the ancient powers sealed within her dreams. Impa knows the legend is true, and she fears the fate that will befall the kingdom should the first Zelda wake. Yet when a shadow rises on the borders of Hyrule after the birth of a new princess, Impa must make a terrible choice.

I had the honor of contributing a story called “The Sleeping Princess” to Blood Moon Rising: A Zelda Horror Zine. I was interested in exploring the background of Princess Zelda in the original 1986 game, and I thought it might be fun to see her story through the eyes of Impa, who knew about the undead princess who was the first of Zelda’s line. In other words, I’m connecting some of the more disturbing threads between The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

“The Sleeping Princess” is a story about maternal love, political sacrifice, and the dark secrets hidden within the labyrinthine dungeons of Hyrule. I was strongly inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s novel At the Mountains of Madness, which dwells in the geometric terror of monumental architecture built by strange hands, and I did my best to create a sense of ruined grandeur similar to that of Dark Souls and Ico: Castle in the Mist.

For the story’s illustrations, I had the incredible pleasure of working with the devilishly talented Pumpkinsouppe, whose dark arts brought this ruined world to life.

You can find “The Sleeping Princess” on AO3 here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/62492182

Leftover sales of the zine are open until February 24 on BigCartel (here).

Studio Ghibli Fanzine Preorders

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I’m excited to share a preview of the short story I wrote for New Winds: A Studio Ghibli Fanzine.

My story, “The Record of the Last Heavenly Warrior,” is narrated from the perspective of one of the giant robots from Castle in the Sky who remained in Laputa Castle after all the humans fled. The log it creates across the years is an account of the actions it takes to help nature return to the abandoned structure. Through the care it offers the environment and its companions, the robot gradually begins to understand why humans abandoned the fortress, and it wonders what it will do should they ever return.

The editors and layout artists who’ve worked on New Winds put an extraordinary amount of love and attention into making the writing in this zine shine, and the comics and illustrations that fill the pages are equally beautiful. If you’re interested, preorders for the zine are open until February 6 on Bigcartel (here). You can check out more previews on the zine’s accounts on Twitter (here) and Tumblr (here).

🌿 https://studioghiblizine.bigcartel.com/
🌿 https://x.com/ghiblifanzine
🌿 https://ghiblifanzine.tumblr.com/

Summer Break

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In December 2019, I printed a chapbook that contains my unofficial translation of Hiromi Kawakami’s “Summer Break” (Natsu yasumi), the second story in the author’s prizewinning 1998 collection Kamisama. This story has not been officially translated, so I created a translation of my own to use in my Japanese literature classes.

“Summer Break” is a Studio Ghibli style celebration of the magic of the natural world and a quiet meditation on coping with mental illness. The narrator spends a few weeks working at a pear orchard, where they unwittingly adopt a trio of small tree spirits. One of these creatures is humorously neurotic, and its anxiety for the future resonates with the worries of the narrator, who feels that the world is slipping away from them.

You can download a free PDF copy of the chapbook from Itch.io here:
🌿 https://digitalterrarium.itch.io/summer-break

The cover illustration was created by Koyamori, who goes by @maruti_bitamin on Instagram.

An Unfound Door, Chapter 16

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Fhiad reflects on the uncanny emptiness of Erdbhein Castle as he leads Agnes to the queen’s ruined chambers. While describing Erdbhein before the war, Fhiad tells Agnes about his three sisters, all of whom were highly competent administrators. Fhiad confesses that he dreamed of becoming a mage so he could return to Erdbhein to build monumental stone structures aboveground to rival the stonework in the long-abandoned city underneath the castle.

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This chapter is about Fhiad processing his grief. It would be the perfect opportunity for an exposition dump, but Fhiad isn’t in a good mental state to deliver a lecture at the moment. Like Agnes, he feels like a failure, and he misses his family.

While Fhiad talks about the past, I hope the reader gets a sense of this character belonging to a much larger story. Unfortunately, Fhiad is never going to be able to live that story, and the reader isn’t going to hear much more about it, either. Fhiad mentions spending time in an ancient city in the mountains below Erdbhein, and tells Agnes that he went to university to study architecture because he always dreamed of building something equally grand aboveground.

That’s an intriguing detail, I hope. It adds another layer of foreshadowing regarding Agnes and Fhiad’s final destination, but the reader is never going to encounter another reference to Erdbhein’s history and culture. That’s what it means for an entire group of people to be destroyed; all of their art and memories and folklore are destroyed along with them.

Agnes is deeply disturbed by this loss, as she should be. Meanwhile, Fhiad’s anger regarding the destruction of Erdbhein has drained away, alongside his sense of agency. At the beginning of the story, he was furious and hostile and scary, but he’s become calmer and more introspective as the reality of his situation becomes clear.

Fhiad’s monologue in this chapter mirrors Agnes’s monologue at the beginning of the novel about how she’s the exact wrong person to handle a difficult situation. Agnes was doing something stupid (bringing a demon back to Faloren) because she felt that she had no power to halt her kingdom’s decline on her own. Fhiad was likewise attempting to do something stupid (stealing a relic that could turn back time) because he saw no other way to address what happened in the past. Fhiad knows that his mother or any one of his sisters could have been effective in restoring his kingdom, but he feels that he himself doesn’t have the power to do anything. And honestly, he’s right.

I think that’s a hard lesson to learn, that sometimes you’re just not the right person to fix a messed-up situation. Not everyone can be a hero. At the same time, if a broken situation can’t be fixed by normal people working together and trying their best while using the tools at their disposal, then perhaps the situation isn’t worth fixing.

In The Demon King, a novel I put on hold to focus on writing An Unfound Door, the main character finds himself in a situation that’s somewhat similar to what Fhiad’s going through. This character is going to succeed by virtue of being ten years older and completely unhinged, and his success will destroy him. Fhiad is going to fail, though. His failure isn’t without sadness, but accepting himself and the reality of his circumstances is going to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

The same goes for Agnes, who needs to understand that she can simply walk away from Faloren. The arc of her character development is longer and more complicated; but, from this point forward, it’s going to be Fhiad’s job to support her.

This chapter is relatively quiet, especially after the action in the previous chapter, but it’s the emotional turning point of the novel. So this chapter is about grief, but it’s also about two tired adults taking a much-needed break to have a nice date with delicious tea in a handsome ruined castle overgrown with beautiful bioluminescent flowers.

The illustration of Fhiad in this chapter’s preview graphic was created by the bold and brilliant fantasy illustrator Armd39, who posts dynamic and creatively textured artwork on Bluesky (here) and on Instagram (here). You can also find her commission info pinned on Twitter (here) if you’re interested. Arma was wonderful to work with, and the process of creating this illustration was a fantastic experience that easily added a few months to my life.

The Smile of the Mountain Demon

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Liam is a budding content creator who specializes in guided meditation videos. Seeking to grow his following, he jumps at an Airbnb listing for a spiritual retreat in the Adachigahara mountains of rural Japan. At the end of a long journey, the stylish cabin enclosed within a verdant forest is everything Liam could hope for. The beautiful young woman who manages the property offers a warm welcome, but there’s something strange about her smile…

I was extremely honored to contribute to this year’s 13 Days Advent horror anthology. My story, “The Smile of the Mountain Demon,” is about a 21st century yamauba who entraps a YouTube influencer with Buddhist pretensions by using Airbnb and the language of New Age spirituality. The young man is looking for a scenic “spiritual retreat” to use as a source of content, and the yamauba is looking for a tasty snack.

This story is based on the medieval Adachigahara folktales in which a cunning yamauba entraps a less-than-devout Buddhist priest, as well as Minako Ohba’s beautiful and heartbreaking short story “The Smile of a Mountain Witch.”

If you’re interested, I’ve posted my story on AO3 (here), and you can download a free digital copy of the anthology via its page on Itchio here:

🌟 https://13daysadvent.itch.io/13days-demons-divinity

The illustration that accompanies my story was created by the brilliant dark fantasy artist Maxyvert, who posts strange and ethereal paintings on Tumblr (here), on Instagram (here), and on Twitter (here). This artist takes commissions for both digital and physical watercolor portraits (here), and it was an amazing experience to work with them.

An Unfound Door, Chapter 15

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Now that Fhiad has taken the form of a demon boar, Agnes rides him through the mountain forest on the way to Erdbhein. They make quick progress, stopping only for Agnes to rest. As they approach Erdbhein Castle, Fhiad leads Agnes to an overlook from which she can see the overgrown ruins of the city in the valley.

At the cliffside castle’s back entrance, severely decayed husks emerge from what used to be a village that housed the castle staff. Fhiad is frightened, so Agnes dismounts and comforts him as she leads him across a bridge and into the castle’s rear courtyard. More husks emerge, and Fhiad is paralyzed with fear. Agnes forcibly reverts him to his human form, and they escape into the castle keep.

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Based on the synopsis, you might think there’s fighting in this chapter, but the truth is that I dislike writing action. As much as I enjoy the choreography of cinematic fight scenes, I find prose descriptions of battles to be tedious. I always skim through action sequences as a reader. Why subject myself to this sort of thing as a writer?

In my defense, neither Fhiad nor Agnes is an action hero. Fhiad is an extremely cowardly demon, and Agnes wields a sword the way I imagine most people would, which is to panic and swing it around wildly. When she actually hits something, she’s horrified and disgusted.

Instead of a thrilling adventure, this chapter is more of an extended meditation on death and decay. In particular, I really enjoyed writing about the slow creep of the husks. My personal take on zombies is that they’re scariest when they take the “persistence predator” aspects of human physicality to an extreme. Fast zombies are a lot of fun! But slow zombies that just keep coming? That’s what really creeps me out.

On a more serious note, zombies are an indirect way to think through the indignity of certain types of death. An Unfound Door isn’t a political novel by any means, but I can’t deny that I wrote this story while watching a genocide unfold. It’s important to bear witness, I think. Still, I’m disturbed by the media spectacle of destruction, in which the victims of war are reduced to nothing more than their blunt physicality in order to sell an enticing narrative to a public that passively consumes death on television or online. As my academic work has (hopefully) demonstrated, I care deeply about these issues, and fiction is another way to explore the complications and consequences of an empire lashing out at imagined enemies as it crumbles from the inside. Let it suffice to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for zombies.

In any case, Agnes isn’t particularly afraid of husks, which she sees as pathetic but harmless. There are a whole lot of husks in this ruined castle, however, and Agnes has a difficult time shepherding Fhiad inside the keep while doing her best to keep both of them safe. Consequently, the main narrative breakthrough that occurs in this chapter is a demonstration that Agnes has become much more sensitive to Fhiad’s emotional state. I guess riding a man through the forest like a horse will do that.

The illustration of Agnes in the chapter preview graphic was created by Loustica Lucia, a bright and shining fantasy artist who posts colorful battle scenes and character portraits on Instagram (here), on Tumblr (here), and on Bluesky (here).