The NoSleep podcast recently published a wonderful adaption of my story, A Trick of the Light. It’s available here, for $1.99. I’m about 1:12 of the way in. They did a wonderful job, and Peter Lewis’s narration fits the story perfectly.
The story reaches back to a couple of years ago, when I first began taking walks in my neighborhood, and playing with the ideas that would form the genre of suburban horror. I’ve written about these walks before; it was a transformational time in my life, and seemingly the life of the world around me. My Dad had died a few months prior, I had just accepted early retirement, Covid had just reared its head for the first time, the 2020 election was looming in November.
I was still working, so my walks took place in late afternoon. Shadows were long as the sun dropped toward the mountains. My own shadow stretched out from me as I walked, behind me, in front of me, to the side, depending on what direction I walked.
What if?, I asked myself. What if I saw a shadow walking next to mine? A shadow head bobbing with the gait of a shadow body, just like my own shadow.
What would I see if I turned around?
That’s the premise of the story. You’ll need to read it to find out the rest.
I still walk. This is my third summer of walking, and in a different neighborhood than that first year. Different shadows accompany me on my walks, though there are always shadows. Things follow me, just as things follow all of us, I assume.
The shadow of the world, incredibly, has only grown more dark and uncertain. The shadow of my own mortality, and the mortality of my friends and family walks beside me, closer every day. The comforting shadow of love, the shadow of art, the shadow of all those unfinished stories in my head are a constant companion. The long, imperfect, forever unfinished shadow of parenthood leans over me as I watch my daughters navigate those first, coltish steps into adulthood.
What do you see when you turn around? What shadows follow you?
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At any rate, it is a good feeling to be back writing in the Oort Cloud again. I sold my house in the interim, and have ninety two thousand words of a new novel in my pocket.
Listen to A Trick of the Light, if you can find the time.