My Krampus Story is at Pseudopod!!!
Here's a Christmas present I discovered at the beginning of the year: my Krampus short story "Saint Nicholas' Helper" is at Pseudopod, in time for the holidays! Being as it's at Pseudopod, it is not a nice story. But if you dark fiction to go with the darkest nights of the year, I hope you enjoy it.
There's a storybook my parents had that's disappeared everywhere but in my mind. When I was a kid, I had this book about Christmases around the world, and there was this one story in there about Saint Nicholas and Krampus coming to visit a little girl. HOLY SHIT, I loved that story, and had my parents read it to me over and and over again (probably, it disturbed them a bit - they were extremely conservative and while they somehow tolerated Star Wars, they weren't big fans of sorcery or horror or anything demonic like that). Anyway, in that story, you got the feeling that Saint Nicholas was actually the girl's uncle or neighbor or something dressed up. But Krampus? He was a little demonic elf. I always wondered, who in that story dressed up as him? And this story kind of stems from that, along with some other questions I asked myself later on, like, why would Saint Nicholas need a demon to help him? So for those of you who have been missing my spiritual noir, this might hit some of your squids.
Marie Brennan (aka:swan_tower) gave it an AMAZING read. It's been about a year and a half since I finished writing the story, and so listening to it on my morning commute this morning - well, I got all tense during one of the scenes in the middle. Not because I'd forgotten what happened, but because Marie read it so so perfectly. And Alasdair's comments at the end were, of course, the best icing on the cake.
And I really can't express how nice it is to listen to my story after all that time, and think, you know, I really did okay with it.
Huge thanks to all my friends who beta read this one for me: bogwitch64, avocadovpx, voidmonster, prusik, and Anna Schwind. They definitely made this story so much better than it would've been.
Anyway, that's probably enough out of me. If you've got half an hour, give it a listen and let me know what you thought of it!
There's a storybook my parents had that's disappeared everywhere but in my mind. When I was a kid, I had this book about Christmases around the world, and there was this one story in there about Saint Nicholas and Krampus coming to visit a little girl. HOLY SHIT, I loved that story, and had my parents read it to me over and and over again (probably, it disturbed them a bit - they were extremely conservative and while they somehow tolerated Star Wars, they weren't big fans of sorcery or horror or anything demonic like that). Anyway, in that story, you got the feeling that Saint Nicholas was actually the girl's uncle or neighbor or something dressed up. But Krampus? He was a little demonic elf. I always wondered, who in that story dressed up as him? And this story kind of stems from that, along with some other questions I asked myself later on, like, why would Saint Nicholas need a demon to help him? So for those of you who have been missing my spiritual noir, this might hit some of your squids.
Marie Brennan (aka:swan_tower) gave it an AMAZING read. It's been about a year and a half since I finished writing the story, and so listening to it on my morning commute this morning - well, I got all tense during one of the scenes in the middle. Not because I'd forgotten what happened, but because Marie read it so so perfectly. And Alasdair's comments at the end were, of course, the best icing on the cake.
And I really can't express how nice it is to listen to my story after all that time, and think, you know, I really did okay with it.
Huge thanks to all my friends who beta read this one for me: bogwitch64, avocadovpx, voidmonster, prusik, and Anna Schwind. They definitely made this story so much better than it would've been.
Anyway, that's probably enough out of me. If you've got half an hour, give it a listen and let me know what you thought of it!