Knock Knock

"Beautifully written and relentlessly suspenseful, it's a great book to curl up with on a cold winter's night. Just be sure to keep the doors locked and all the lights on!" -Lucy Taylor, THE SILENCE BETWEEN THE SCREAMS

"...more than a great read; it is a fascinating meditation on the nature of horror. There are supernatural elements to the book, yes, but the setting (an impoverished, ruined logging town) and the main characters (three school girls with hopes and dreams made improbable if not impossible by their realities) are a beautifully rendered commentary on the cyclical nature of real-world human tragedy." -Molly Tanzer, A PRETTY MOUTH

"Starting slowly the book builds to a crescendo, first giving us innocent children on a jaunt in the woods and then taking the story forward to where they are fallible adults, exposed to the machinations of the evil they have unwittingly released. Eventually the story achieves a momentum all its own, rushing headlong to a shattering finale, and the prose, which Miskowski uses with such care and accuracy throughout, in the final pages attains a fever dream intensity, so that we can't trace any clear divide between reality and the skewed perspectives of the characters, the two blurring into each other, everything viewed through a blood red filter and in the light cast by flickering flames." -Peter Tennant, Black Static

"With her distinct voice, Miskowski takes you deep into the back woods of America, where shadows chase you and people do the unthinkable." -Angel Leigh McCoy, Wily Writers

At the center of S.P. Miskowski's novel-length fairy tale are three restless girls, best friends stuck in the backwater of Skillute, Washington in the late 1960s. Their neighbors and families are petty or poor, or both. They warn the girls not to wander into the dense forest. Something evil lurks there, people say. The girls are not convinced. During a playful oath, they wander too far into the woods. Their mistake unleashes a malignant spirit that terrorizes Skillute for the next fifty years.
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.