After running away from her drug kingpin boyfriend (and turning him in to the cops), pregnant Amber hides away in her friend Higgins' house. Higgins works at a convalescent facility and writes morbid short stories, but she feels safe - until both her body and Higgins start to change on her. On Halloween night, it becomes clear who is wearing a disguise and why.
Jessica Barksdale Inclán's sixteenth novel, What the Moon Did, and her first short story collection, Trick of the Porch Light, were published in 2023. Her novels include Her Daughter’s Eyes, The Play's the Thing, and The Burning Hour.
A Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee, her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in the The Sun, Salt Hill Journal, Tahoma Review, and So to Speak. Her work has been recognized and honored by The Sewanee Review, The Wigleaf, The North American Review, and The Ocotillo Review
She taught composition, literature, and creative writing at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California and continues to teach novel writing online for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University.
She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband.
Another nice slice of fiction from a talented short story author. This story hones in on the ever-changing moods of a woman who wants to escape her past while pregnant with her former lover's child. At times, the story reads like a snapshot of a young woman's folly. At other times, it seems to shatter into varied plot points; the author manages to restructure the story with grace.