I’m generally not one to mind waking up and going to work (especially when that consists of getting showered and walking downstairs), but today I woke up to a new short story acceptance—and this Monday morning was much improved! I’m delighted to announce that “Knit, Purl” will appear in the Blood & Bone anthology from Ghost Orchid Press.

During fall semester I took a storytelling class with one of my favorite professors. I generally stay away from writing pure horror in my academic classes—horror is an acquired taste, and I don’t want to make people uncomfortable when they didn’t sign on for guts and gore in the first place. But toward the end of the semester we were asked to write up a short piece of flash fiction, and I’d been noodling with a knitting-related body horror short story . . . so I completed it for this assignment, read it aloud to class, and felt really bad about grossing out every single student. There’s something really visceral about body horror that’s deeply upsetting to a lot of folks. I included the expanded piece (the version that was accepted to this anthology) in my final portfolio, and my professor wrote a note: “Sorry, Nicole—I had to skim over most of this. It freaked me out.”

As much as I feel bad about subjecting non-horror writers to “Knit, Purl,” it also gave me a lot of confidence that it was ready to submit. It’s so nice when that instinct is right on! The estimated release date is September 2021, so be on the look out for the Blood & Bone anthology—from the other writers I know of with stories in the table of contents on this one, it should be pretty great.