Astoria

In the aftermath of a shattering tragedy, Ethel Sanders flees her hometown of Skillute in search of a safe place where she can recuperate. She has discarded friends and family in a desperate bid for a new life, yet something is not right in the hideaway she's chosen. Strange images of the past pursue her, even in her dreams. Are they harbingers of the future, reminders of recent events, or her own, personal demons come to stake their final claim?

"Miskowski further enriches the all-too-real horror movie world of Knock, Knock with Astoria, a novella that is part Hitchcock, part David Lynch, and all Miskowski's distinctive, thoughtfully crafted, slow-burn literary terror." -Molly Tanzer, author of A Pretty Mouth

"S.P. Miskowski has been chronicling the mundane horrors of women's lives - marriage, motherhood, family, and domesticity - through the lens of the supernatural since the publication of her Shirley Jackson Award nominated novel Knock Knock. Continuing with her related Skillute Cycle of novellas, Miskowski is unafraid to plumb the darkest impulses of the female psyche, and her gift for vivid characterization and naturalistic detail suffuses her fiction with a sense of frightening and devastating reality. In Astoria, a white-knuckle terror trip across the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, the darkness closing in on one woman's desperate bid to escape the monster she birthed and the life she loathes becomes as palpable as the pages we're turning; we can bolt the door and turn on the light, but in the end, Miskowski warns us, no matter what we do, our demons are coming for us." -Lynda E. Rucker, Black Static columnist and author of The Moon Will Look Strange"Astoria by S.P. Miskowski is a perfect and unique blend of The Omen and Elizabeth Berg's The Pull of the Moon. Miskowski's writing is dark, delicious, and wonderfully layered. As always, her effortless elegance shines through the chilling prose, highlighting the ugly feelings that we wish weren't inside all of us. She manages to turn the reader inside out alongside her characters, revealing that we're all monsters and merely human at gut level." -Mercedes M. Yardley, author of Beautiful Sorrows
About the Author: S.P. Miskowski's debut novel, KNOCK KNOCK, and her first novella, DELPHINE DODD, have been shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award. Both books are part of THE SKILLUTE CYCLE, which includes two more novellas: ASTORIA and IN THE LIGHT. All four books are published by Omnium Gatherum Media.

Rated by Black Static book critic Peter Tennant as "one of the most interesting and original writers to emerge in recent years," Miskowski has written short stories published in Supernatural Tales, Horror Bound Magazine, Identity Theory, The Absent Willow Review, New Times, Fine Madness, Other Voices, and the anthology Detritus. Her work has received a Swarthout Award and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.

Raised on Flannery O'Connor, Edgar Allan Poe, and public television in Decatur, Georgia, Miskowski now lives in California with her husband, fantasy and sci-fi author Cory J. Herndon.

For a review of KNOCK KNOCK and DELPHINE DODD, and an extensive author interview, see BLACK STATIC #33.