Verushka

Available from JournalStone.

 

“Through evocative prose, Stinchcomb establishes a mounting sense of claustrophobia as the tension ratchets up.” —Publishers Weekly

 

Someone is stalking Devon Woodward. They've been there all along, since before she was born, going back to her grandmother's time. Waiting for her. Watching. And the people who should be able to help, her own parents, are making everything worse.

Devon is right to be afraid. Verushka, both victim and villain, is a half-human witch from the other side of the world. She will do anything to get what she needs from the Woodward family, but she may have finally met her match in young Devon.

Will family conflict sabotage Devon's efforts to escape and put her in even greater danger? In this multi-perspective novel that is part fairy tale and part horror story, a young girl fights to uncover the truth and save her own life.

 

 

The Kelping

Available from Unnerving via Bookshop.org and Amazon.

The story of the mermaid bothered Craig the most. It did not mean anything, not really, but now this children's tale was imbued with strange significance. He thought about the woman on the bike path. Was she a redhead? It had been too dark to tell. Strange. Both he and his son had encountered a mysterious female before the Sea King Festival.

 

"If you’re in the mood for a waterlogged version of The Wicker Man experience, or, if you prefer, a maritime Midsommar, I would definitely recommend slapping The Kelping onto your shelf."

—Ben Walker, Kendall Reviews

 

 

The Blood Trail

Available from Red Bird Chapbooks.

Elle wakes to a merciful dusk. She walks away from the pond, sticking to the well-worn path, and only when her senses tell her it is safe, does she leave it. The important thing is to be as quiet as possible. She must erase herself until she becomes part of the forest. Every once in a while she stands still, holding her breath so that she can really listen. She uses her nose, which has become even more important than her eyes. Her whiskers have a life of their own. She is so hungry it hurts.

 

"Certain stories are too dangerous to be spoken because the world might fall apart, families might dissolve, and marriage could lose all meaning. Implicit is the notion that trauma lives on in the body itself, thus the need to separate memory from its physical source, the bodily crime scene."

—Jan Stinchcomb, from her interview with Cathrin Hagey, Luna Station Quarterly

 

 

Find the Girl

Available for purchase at Main Street Rag.

You didn’t have to be married. You didn’t always end up with a baby. You didn’t have to be a certain age. You almost always got into some kind of trouble. Girls disappeared to have their babies elsewhere. Girls made their babies disappear. Kids who took things too far sometimes became famous for it.