The Skin Stealer published


My story "The Skin Stealer" is in the latest issue of Penumbra. This is my third time to have a story in Penumbra (fourth if you include the story reprinted in the best of year 1 issue), which is great. It was a story I wrote specifically for the theme, which is "A Night at the Villa Diodati." The reference is to the writing prompt that led John Polidori to write the first English-language vampire novel, Vampyre, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to write Frankenstein (as well as never-finished horror stories by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron).

The first thought for this story came awhile back, when my kids were in a zombie phase (inspired by Plants vs. Zombies or Zombie Farm or something like that). And I thought, there's vampires that drink blood and zombies that eat brains. I'm not interested in writing about either of them, so what else could a horror monster steal? Maybe some other day I'll write about a breath-breather, but for now at least you can read about the skin stealer.

Check it out!

Comments