I Know A Place is a short story version of “Nevermind,” put together—sequenced—like an album you know is going to make some waves. ‘Oh yeah, that’s the one that started it all,’ they’ll say. Not that Nat Cassidy is new to this, but there’s a feverish freedom running through the veins of this collection that I haven’t seen/felt from his writing before. Assigning stars to art doesn’t do much in the way of recommending something, so here’s a quick breakdown of what you’ll experience when you drop the needle on this one.

Rest Stop: A surreal locked-in-a-gas-station-bathroom yarn about a musician pining for his buddy’s girl. It’s a cat and mouse slasher-type story where Cassidy gets you to care about a somewhat unlikeable character. The chunkiest of the thirteen stories included, it starts out as a pretty cut and dry ‘ordinary dude in extraordinary circumstances’ story, but then something strange happens about half-way through: it gets better and better and better, and layers of meaning and theme and identity start to snowball into a total existential crisis where you’re wrestling with God. But then again, it could just be a story about a rest stop. Killer way to open this collection.

Meet-Cute #1: The Unluckiest Girl: An atmospheric, slow stab in the gut, with three red flags: a date, a name, and a geographic location. One of those ‘Ah-ha!—Oh no!’ kind of stories.

Generation: A gynecologist who loves her booze, rehashing the kinds of arguments—spoken and unspoken—she hears from patients awaiting their bundles of joy…or pain…or tentacles? No hand holding here, you’re dropped in the deep end of the gene pool. I liked the ambiguity at the end, the long exhale. Forces the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Nice: An overworked elf, a kid obsessed with Santa Claus, and a whole lot of blood. If Meet-Cute #1 is a slow stab in the gut, Nice is a flurry of slashes and nasty laughs in your face. With tinsel and cookies, of course.

The Art of What You Want: A businessman/doctor confessional about a dude who keeps seeing/hearing his dead wife. No collection is complete without a good ole’ ‘stabbed in the back revenge’ story, and this one mostly satisfies, using flashbacks that, surprisingly, don’t weigh down the story’s velocity. That ending, though?

The Lunar Eclipse: A haunting ‘Then and Now’ story about returns, survival, and innocence lost. This is where the collection starts to sing, to riff off of form and style and time and place, leaving you kinda breathless after those last lines. For the life of me, I can’t explain why I liked this story so much, but that’s what good fiction does, right? One of the best stories here.

Laughlines: Missy’s off to Merrie Olde England to discover her roots. An estranged dad, a labyrinthian castle staffed by people who find everything a little too funny, horrific tapestries, and a deranged Lord who haunts the halls makes this email-formatted (epistolary?) story the most humorous and conversational of the lot. No matter what direction you think Laughlines is going in, the ending will have you laughing out loud.

Run for Your Life: 11/22/63 meets “We Sold Our Souls” for Rock N’ Roll in this poignant time-travel tale of a lonely self-proclaimed musical genius who goes full-on murdering mogul to hold on to what ultimately never belonged to him in the first place. Now, I’m more of a Stones person (Jagger), but even if you don’t know much about the Beatles, this story will still hit you in the feels. If you love music, all the better. Easily one of the best stories here, especially if you struggle with imposter syndrome. No one else can tell the story (make the music) that you can, the way you can. You might need fingers for that, though.

Jubilee Juncture: Cassidy does a lot with a small space here. For some reason this story reminded me of that movie “Death to Smoochy,” but I digress. There’s a dude who runs a Christian children’s TV show, a puppeteer who may’ve just been banned from the show, and a four-foot tall dummy sitting in a dark corner. Then, there’s a wet sfflllppttt. This one’s dungeon-level dark.

Come: There’s a sex video—teacher/student in the science room—being passed around Paradise Valley High. The student in that video is dead now, as are a bunch of students who watched it. Raging hormones + watching a possibly cursed sex video = a swath of dead teenagers. But our POV character, despite watching the video herself, is still alive. What gives? Loved the ending of this one (total title-card moment). Reminded me a bit of “It Follows.”

Into the Life of Things: Two detectives are on the scene of a women who died on a stairwell below a skylight in a mental health facility. This one reminds me of “Lunar Eclipse,” not the story or style but the way it makes you feel. A ‘married’ couple join a yoga retreat and are forced to communicate using white boards (the format works wonders) during certain times of day/night, only that ‘silent’ communication becomes something akin to the empty space surrounding the branches of a tree. Honestly, I was rooting for Joshua the entire story. The ending leaves you twisting in the wind a bit, but all you have to do is ‘focus.’

Meet-Cute #2: The Scariest Thing: There’s a lot of humanity in all of these stories, but I think this one shines in that category. I was expecting a quick stab like the first ‘Meet-Cute’ but was both pleasantly surprised and left with a sense of sadness. Man, this story is all about confession, and honesty, and coming to terms with what you can and can’t change, and the horror of either accepting reality or fantasy, and you’re left with a silhouette, two hands, fearless as long as they hold on to each other. There’s the exit door, there’s the hand, make a choice. The scariest thing, for sure. *There’s a great line here: “…for every moment you manage to survive in this world, you’re worthy of myth.”

A Fruiting Body: If E.E. Cummings wrote a cosmic joke that was adapted into a stage play and you participated in a table read of it, you’d get ‘A Fruiting Body.’ I read it alone, picked up on the rhythm of it, and was totally exhilarated by the knock knock ending. All roller coaster ride, all feeling, totally perfect way to end this album. Might be my favorite story here.

Not only are collections a tough sell these days, they’re really hard to put together in a cohesive but fluctuating, satisfying, sing-song way like Cassidy’s done here. So much more to say about ‘I Know A Place,’ but go find out for yourself. Every story here is worth it.

Time to explain, or choose the miracle. I choose the miracle.

Think I’ve read three novels by Kraus: Scowler, Rotters, and Whalefall; enjoyed them all. I started Angel Down but it completely fried my brain (I’ll pick it up again one day). Although Whalefall is brilliant, I think The Sixth Nik is my favorite. Assigning stars to art is pretty meaningless, as is rehashing jacket copy and synopsis, so I’ll hit the meat and potatoes here, maybe the way it made me feel.

The Sixth Nik is a brutal journey of self-discovery, that self being a nine-year-old who isn’t built the way most nine-year-olds are. It’s science fiction, sure, and horror and fantasy and a bunch of other shelves to fit on, and yeah, it’s akin to ‘Alien’ and maybe ‘Murderbot’ but so much more. The prose is absolutely insane! I mean, even if there were no characters and no plot I probably would have read the whole thing. I got tired of writing amazing lines in my notebook. Here are a few. ‘Smart fiber optics hanging from hooks like horse whips.’ ‘The cabin’s other socket gazed out into an ebony outer space enlivened by the colorful cauliflower of a distant nebula.’ ‘I looked and felt like a Murder but moved like an eleven-year-old fresh off a clumsy abortion.’ I had to read this in ten percent bursts because the prose just had me smiling, was kinda overwhelming in some spots. And Kraus doesn’t let up, not sure how he keeps up that level of writing for so long.

The world building was really easy to absorb and visualize because I got the feeling that the story took place in the not so distant future, like it might actually exist someday, and most of the backstory was based on historical events, didn’t feel far-fetched or too abstract. The biological terms are solid, and I’m pretty sure Kraus had fun creating/combining systems for the descriptions of The Sickness. It’s a tumorous ship with a killer placenta—I mean, doesn’t get better than that. The use of color and texture and taste in the descriptions was deft as hell, some so spot-on that you just laugh about it.

Arzan, Feng, Jayne, Murder 005, Roy, Pug the Rust Man, Tuma, Talfa and Joe, all unique and rendered with a depth that slowly chips away at Sisilla’s snail shell. The Iron Sea sections were awesome: you ever flipped your bike to put that greasy chain back on its sprocket? That’s what it’s like. The Nik Six was a great way to explore the characters through Sisilla’s perspective, a great set of questions to ask yourself, really, and they resurface at a crucial point in the story.

There’s a chapter where the crew of The Sickness port in to a kind of internet analogue called the Snarl, formatted in these strange wavy columns of text, that will totally suck you into the experience.

Don’t get me wrong, none of this story is sunshine and rainbows. It’s super brutal, visceral, and horrific, and there were times when I said to myself, ‘Man, is this girl ever gonna catch a break?’ As soon as she starts to catch her breath, BAM! Another one bites the dust. Back into the meat grinder. Truth hurts, though, and kids go through hell, and sometimes found family and good memories, real or not, are the only things that get you through. The ending was apt, wonderful, artful, even, and I feel like Sisilla GA! was always going to end up GA! closest to what made her GA! feel like she was home GA!

Quote: ‘As a result, it is arguable that it does not matter if the niks work at all. The story of the niks works, and it seems like that is all the world requires.’

Big thanks to Netgalley, Saga Press, and Daniel Kraus for the opportunity to experience this.

We recently had a power outage up here in the woods that lasted roughly seven days, mostly due to downed trees. Creative ways to boil water, store food (packed it in snow outside), and keep ourselves busy and productive ensued. Real quick: Trivial Pursuit (some kind of ‘genius’ edition) has the most ridiculous questions imaginable; my knowledge of geography turns out to be subpar at best. Suffice it to say, we agreed that the one thing we really missed during that period with no power was hearing music. When that magical moment of power restoration hit, man did we celebrate, throwing headphones on and smiling and rocking out the rest of the day–then the TV inevitably came to life.

I can write without music, no problem, but it’s kinda like taking a really long road trip in silence, windows up. About seven years ago I recognized how my brain works a bit like that guy Pavlov’s dog did (dog’s dead, by the way): ring a bell and get a treat. The bell’s a song; the treat’s a voice, or the angle for a voice to pry it’s way in, that is. So every project has a playlist now, consisting of maybe twenty songs, something like that, running 3-4 minutes a piece. Doing the math, that’s roughly 60-80 minutes. Now, I can’t write productively for that duration of time, or I can but it’ll all end up in the chipper when the door’s open for editing. 15-20 minute bursts is about where I sit now, just about enough time for a single song to repeat 3-4 times, get up and interact with the world, then hit the page again. It’s more about a time count than a word count, I guess’s what I’m saying.

My mom used to take me to the movies all the time, it was just a thing we did together, and right after the credits began to roll (no cut scenes post credits back then) we’d hit Music Plus and pick up the soundtrack to whatever we watched, if it was good. Association of story with music solidified. Really, it’s a time machine that works if you listen hard enough. Here’s the playlist I used to write SLAP (s’what we’ve been calling Scream Like a Prayer since the get). I realize not everyone uses apple music. If you do, here’s the link. If not, well, here’s the analog version (I don’t do Spotify). Each song’s a chapter title, with a few omitted on the chopping block. *That cover’s an old polaroid of me screaming in my grandma’s bathroom.

https://music.apple.com/us/library/playlist/p.06aW30pi0xGer65

And “Send Me an Angel” by Real Life, I’m pretty sure I first heard it watching Rad. It’s this prom dance scene done with freestyle BMX bikes.

Before you read any further, know that this is just a test–a throat clear, as I like to call it. Checking this site, it looks like the last time I did this thing was four years ago, and what better time to start this engine up again than a new release by yours truly. There’s gonna be links to click, contents of wallets and purses, and whatever change you find (is that even a thing anymore?) under couch cushions to generously push my way soon, but that’ll all get eaten up before I know it. So yeah, let’s make a long story short, flash, even, maybe.

My debut novel Scream Like a Prayer is being released by Atreyu Press on April 8, 2026. One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years is that I have to get a lot lot lot of distance from whatever I finish and put in the trunk, have to padlock it and put it in a corner, before I can see through those Matrix eyes and cut it and fix it and finally feel proud of it. I think Scream Like a Prayer went through nine drafts, but alas, it lives and breathes and will be walking (flying) around in about a month here. Super proud of it.

The cover’s all Alan Lastufka, interiors all Todd Keisling, both wonderful to work with.

There are like three different descriptions of the story (working on short, bite-size bits now), but I think a short paragraph from early on pretty much hits the nail on the head.

I opened my eyes and saw that Mom’s reflection had been replaced by the shape of something I’ve tried for years to erase from my memory. Something demonic. A clawed hand, completely charred, where Mom’s had been on my shoulder, and breath like rotten meat, its outline that of a child my own size, with horns higher than the edges of the mirror could reflect. Its red eyes blinked when I blinked, as if it were imitating me, but its mouth wasn’t turned down like mine. It was smiling, the sharp corners of its mouth slashed upward in a lipless half-moon.

It’s going to speak, I thought, say something so horrible my ears will bleed.

“Come fly with me.”

You can request an ACR from NetGalley all the way to the pub date and beyond, I believe.

https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/802721

Atreyu Press (and this site, too, under one of these tabs) has the full first chapter up to read for free.

https://atreyupress.com

The ebook (my preferred format of late) is available to pre-order from the Zon (link’s acting all wonky right now, you know the way).

A couple of early reviews up on Goodreads as well.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249036275-scream-like-a-prayer

Hardcover, paperback, and audiobook are fast coming, then I’ll link ’em.

Until next time I need a throat clear, later, folks.

I’ll jump on this blog thingy not so much because I have pearls to share. I don’t. If you ask most people out there in digital ether land about blogs, they’ll cringe, at least that’s the impression I get. I do it to clear my throat.

Had a project some five years ago, something I thought was complete, and it was, ran roughly 45K words, a good size novella. The problem wasn’t length, or punctuation, or a zinger ending. It was the first two pages. Not only because those first two pages are what agents/editors/Mr. Smiths are going to judge your whole story on, your chance to sink a hook into them, but because, at least in my case, it’s not usually where the story begins. A mentor told me, “the voice is great, could read this voice all day, but you’re clearing your throat at the beginning. Just go!”

When I think about ‘hook them at the get-go,’ it stifles me, like all those shows that aired after The X-Files, using the insane, non-informative cold-open to catch your attention. Two minutes later, you’re in an office or kitchen or school, building the ‘normal’ state of a character’s life before you muck it all up. I guess what I’m saying is, writing a beginning, or even the start of a new chapter, is kind of like starting a car that’s been parked in a snowstorm for a day or two. It needs some warm-up. Caffeine helps too. That’s all I have to say about that.

Been reading a lot about what ‘tense is best.’ No such thing, I think. There’re comfort preferences, what most readers are used to, the tried and mostly true, sure. You can go back and ‘re-tense’ a whole thing ad-nauseum, which is a lot more work than just changing says to said or he/she to I, but really, it’s going to be what’s in your gut. Writers have instincts, like animals, which is to say, go with what’s churning in your head, what’s talking to you. If it hits, use it. Hell, if you want to stop halfway through a chapter and change tense or POV, and it makes so much sense to you, give it a whirl. No one is going to rap you on the knuckles for it. Then again, it might just come out shitty.

Thoughts on some horror/slashers I’ve been watching lately. Well, not so much about the films in particular, but the tropes: incompetent cops (which might just be a reflection of the real world) and oblivious adults/parents. None of it goes down the way it does if cops actually do their jobs and parents care more about their children than a bottle stashed in the drawer, or a date. Works if the body count racks up in a single day, sure, and our protag is running into them every which way but loose, is the last on the list, but a body count that stacks up over a week? A month? The suspension of disbelief that some dick or bobby isn’t putting the pieces together, some parent isn’t moving their whole family to Madagascar, the protags aren’t being drilled for answers in some smoky interrogation room, sucking up all the time they’d usually have to set a trap for baddie, is a stretch, even for escapism. Gonna work on flipping that, maybe.

What those kids did to that guy in The Burning? Unforgiveable, right? I wouldn’t say I was rooting for him, in his mangled form of course, but those kids definitely deserved what they got. Same goes for most slashers. The scary ones, though, they just happen, visit your open window or closed and deadbolted door for no reason at all. Regan becomes a meat puppet for Pazuzu because what? she played with a Ouija board and named her best friend Captain Howdy? That’s the stuff that lives under my skin. The ‘I’m going to irrevocably change your life in a bad way just because I can’ kind of thing.

Rediscovered this album I used to love, still do. Think I had about 4 CDs at the time, and this one got a lot of air time. Era wise, it’s a great addition to my WIP playlist. Not a bad cover either. Okay, throat cleared. Time to write.

Think I’m in sixth or seventh grade, with nothing much to do on the 4th of July, but I know someone’s got fireworks/crackers somewhere (works: legal, crackers: not). That somewhere happens to be at a relative’s house, Dennis, I’m pretty sure his name was, where the promise of lots of food and explosions was better than nothing, a notch above watching the tube till sunset, I guess.

Dennis had these three-foot high metal pipes, welded at one end to a plate, for stability, you know, lined across the driveway like anti-aircraft cannons. The food is good; I hold on to a sparkler too long and get finger-singed, then Dennis holds out a handful of these red sticks with firecrackers attached to one end. Oh, that’s a bottle-rocket, got it.

Just light it and drop it in the pipe.

At the time, I was used to those firework stands, the ‘city sanctioned’ ones that sell big family packs in shrink-wrap, supposed to be safe, even for kids, and more importantly, they’re legal, not a fire hazard (though it never fails that at least five brush-fire’s’ll break out up the street). Dennis, though, he’s grabbing those rockets from the trunk of his car.

I watch a toddler, then a kid still way younger than me flick a lighter like a pack-a-day smoker and drop it in the pipe. Fire in the hole!

Still pinching a sparkler, feeling the scream of that rocket sear my eardrums as it rises, then pops, a neon flower in full bloom, I think to myself: this is some wild shit (probably thought doo-doo, then), and I’m pretty sure Dennis–maybe the toddlers, too–is sloshed. The twin refrigerators outside have taps, you know, the ones for ice and water, connected to kegs of Burgie chilling inside (not sure I’ve ever seen Burgie outside the IE; think Blue Ribbon but easier on the wallet).

“Here,” he says, hands me a lighter and a rocket, he’s scruffy and sunburned, glossy-eyed, “I crushed it for you.”

‘Crushed it,’ I later found out, means putting the firecracker end on the curb and smashing it with a rock a few times, maybe to pack the powder more, who knows, but it does give a louder bang.

I lit that sucker, dropped it in, and felt like Rambo the rest of the night. Now Dennis, as the night went on, he started pinching those bottle-rockets by the red tip end like I’d been doing with that sparkler, lighting them, aiming them, two-handed, even, and firing them around the yard. That’s when I called it quits.

I won’t say what happened to Dennis, it’s not my place. What I will say is, forty-five Independence Days have passed before my eyes, and this one, that first bottle-rocket day, I remember best.

Go figure.

Spare Parts, my first story collection, is doing fairly well. More importantly, the support I’ve received has been overwhelming. It’s funny how you think you’re so alone in this thing…until you’re not.

Gonna take a mad run at the third, and, hopefully, final draft of this novel I can’t wait to put out into the world. Be safe, stay inside if you can help it, and if you imbibe, please, please, please, don’t drive.

Was listening to my body talk to me this morning. Most of the time it just grunts, creaks, cracks. Today, though, it asked, “You’re gonna keep doing this to us for another ten years, aren’t you?”

Of course not. I don’t bust you up on purpose. I mean, you’re all I got.

“Well, you sure don’t act like it. You ever think about putting some of the load you put on us on that brain of yours?”

I’m trying. Actually, mental strain is a lot harder to deal with than arthritis and sore muscles. So take several seats, body.

And this goes on and on, with nothing ever really getting resolved.

The reason why what most of my body says to me goes in one ear and out the other is, I have this idea that it’s supposed to suffer, this idea that the words ‘work, paycheck, and success’ are grounded in grinding down my body. It’s just what you’re supposed to do. When I think about those three words I immediately sum them up as the result of physical labor. Logically, it’s a crippling mind-set. I mean, my brain, hopefully, will long outlast my body’s ability to get results. And my brain, at least in my own humble opinion, is a pretty good one. It got me this far.

When I hear ‘desk job,’ I cringe inside. Really, it’s fear that’s running the conversations I have with my body. Because I know my limitations when it comes to my body, know how many times I can repeat the same motion before I have to switch hands, know that it will eventually give out on me. What sucks is, I expect that to happen. Like it’s all preordained and I’ll have to sit with it. My brain, on the other hand? I have no idea yet about its limitations. It doesn’t have to be work behind a desk–I’m doing it now, letting it work through my fingers and onto a screen.

“That sounds like heaven,” my body says. “Give it a shot. We’re fucking tired.”

Maybe I will.

“Great. And while you’re at it, stop sucking on those cancer sticks. Remember when we used to run without getting winded? How do you ever expect to play with your children? You gonna roll an oxygen tank out on the playground? You spent all those years educating yourself, reading, writing, got a wall full of degrees, for what? So you can search Indeed for gigs that’ll just break us down even more? Dishwasher, sheetrock worker, warehouse work, food delivery driver.”

There’s nothing wrong with any of those jobs. You think you’re too good to get your hands dirty?

“You’re an idiot.”

Just a few more years, I promise.

“Okay. But just know, it’s not the jobs that’ll kill you. It’s fear. Not that you’re too good for anything. It’s that you think you’re not good enough for everything.”

Yeah.

I know.