Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T¡¯sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.

In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T¡¯sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.

Now, Nesi must learn a trickster¡¯s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

1: A Story Is As Long As It Needs To Be But Won¡¯t Tell You Until It¡¯s Done

First, it was a 5000 word tennis match of dialogue, back and forth over the narrative net, the rookie hotshot with anxiety clearly losing to the seasoned pro, a fox with a tennis racket in their mouth talking circles around the poor thing. Amusing, but not a story. Then, it was a very long short story, something close to 8000 words, which was stuffed to the gills with plot, and not the good kind either, no, this plot was stodgy and puffed up weird in the oven and it¡¯s not that it was bad, per se, it just wasn¡¯t done. Then, when it became a very short long story, what the French among us call ¡°le novelette,¡± it was, how you say, still not awesome. 11,000 words and it was either bloated or too lean, like a funhouse mirror that changed depending on the angle you were looking from. No, it wasn¡¯t until an editor encouraged me that maybe it was book-shaped, or at the very least book-hopeful, that everything began to fall into place. From the outset, I couldn¡¯t have told you it was going to be a novella, (let¡¯s be honest, it¡¯s three words from being a teeny-weeny novel but that¡¯s for the judges to argue about), but I did learn through the six years it took to transform: as always, your story is going to be whatever it needs to be and changing forms to figure it out is all a part of the process.

2: Tricksters Are Tricky On Purpose

Let them be tricky! Let them be a little scamp! No air jail for little fox, no, let them nom upon the hands of those who would lift them from the ground and bite at the ankles of the cruel! Part of figuring out the balance of this story was knowing when, where, and how to deploy the tactical trickster nuke that is the Fox. A being of mischief, lessons, aforementioned scampery, and pranks, the Fox is a god. And a god has very few things to bind them, unless they wish it. Letting the Fox tromp across the narrative is fun, but not engaging. Holding them back is maybe logical but it¡¯s boring, and disappointing to boot; they¡¯re a trickster! If they don¡¯t at least try to tie together the boots of everyone within a mile, readers will be unhappy. Nailing down what made my trickster tick, reasons the Fox would and wouldn¡¯t respect certain boundaries, were essential in showcasing them to the best of my ability. That, and it helped that having a protagonist undergoing a trial; even a god of tricks has to respect that, (kind of).

3: Bitter and Sweet are the Predator Handshake of Narrative

Jokes all the time rob a story of meaning; if nothing is taken seriously in the context of the book, why should the reader take any of it seriously? And if every single thing is treated with the held-breath seriousness of open heart surgery, then are we saying that even in fiction, life is grim, difficult, and needs to be struggled through? I have always been a huge believer that you need the bitter and the sweet working together to create a strong story. If we weren¡¯t able to laugh once in a while, the darkness would crush us. If we didn¡¯t work to overcome the hard times and push through the dark, then the joy of the sun would be rote. Audition For The Fox is a dark book, let¡¯s be clear: it deals with empire, colonialism, torture, oppression, occupation, and more. It looks at these things with clear eyes, and does not flinch from the truth of them. But it is also a book about the very real debate between coffee and tea, a book that laughs when someone falls in shit, that highlights the small joys to be found in community, that sees the world the way it could be, when we lift one another up and help each other smile. I can¡¯t say I did it perfectly, but I did try my very best.

4: Worldbuilding is Scaffolding Around the Building, Not the Building Itself

I¡¯m a firm believer that worldbuilding is awesome, one of my favorite parts of writing, and often, real fucking tedious. Not because it isn¡¯t awesome, mind you, but that I think a lot of writers often mistake worldbuilding to be the creation of a literal building with hundreds of rooms and halls and windows and paintings and stairs and-and-and . . . but it¡¯s not. Your story is the building. That is what needs all that space, those apertures, those details; your worldbuilding is the scaffolding that provides you with the narrative structure to make that building as strong as possible and gives you as many essential parts as you need for the reader to feel welcome, and to help understand the story of the world, and the world of the story. I had loads of fun in Audition For The Fox when I was worldbuilding Oranoya and the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven and everything else but at a certain point, you need to ask: am I adding this explanation, this detail, this texture because the building needs it? Or because I¡¯m worried someone won¡¯t like my building without it? It¡¯s a really hard thing to learn and I know I¡¯m still learning it, but something I really embodied throughout this writing and editing process is that scaffolding, if you can remember to see it that way, helps you build the strongest story possible, and don¡¯t forget: worldbuilding is awesome, yes, but it is NOT the story.

5: Swing For the Imaginary Fences

Publishing is fucking weird, man. It¡¯s picky, it¡¯s hesitant, its non-committal, and nothing is a guarantee. Truly, nothing is certain; even contracts can be broken. So with that being said, if you have the chance to publish and tell your story as close to the way you want to tell it? Fucking go for it, friend. Swing for the fences. Swing like there are no fences. Send your ball into orbit. Blah blah blah you¡¯ll end up among the stars, fuck that, make a new crater on the moon you swung so hard. Who cares if that doesn¡¯t get you ¡°moon points,¡± right? They made up the rules anyway. This is a weird book. It¡¯s weird! Interstitial linked stories, time-travel-fantasy, non-binary trickster energy by the barrelful, and more. It¡¯s a weird little thing, this book, but you know what I can say, wholeheartedly? It¡¯s mine. It¡¯s a book of my own weird little heart, and at the end of the day, sure, maybe that isn¡¯t for everyone. But I know I took a heckuva swing. And I hope wherever the ball lands, it surprises someone and makes them smile.

Martin Cahill has published short fiction in venues including Fireside, Reactor,?Clarkesworld,?Lightspeed,?Beneath Ceaseless Skies,?Shimmer, and?Nightmare. Cahill¡¯s stories ¡°The Fifth Horseman¡± and ¡°Godmeat¡± were respectively nominated for the Ignyte Award and included in?The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019. He was also one of the writers on?Batman: The Blind Cut?and a contributor to?Critical Role: Vox Machina – Stories Untold.?Cahill, who works at Erewhon Books, lives just outside New York City.

Martin Cahill: Website

Audition for the Fox: Tachyon | Bookshop.org | Amazon | B&N

EDIT: By the way, the two winners were picked and their emails sent off to Tananarive and Steven! Congrats, Micah Southwood and Katharine Dow! Expect emails soon, I wager.

HEY. You. Horror-writing-in-training!

Courtesy of Tananarive Due (the ¡°Queen of Black Horror¡± and author of the truly vital The Reformatory) and Steven Barnes, I’m giving away two scholarships to Dark Dreams: Writing Horror That Kills.

(You can learn more about the course here: www.fearmasters.com)

This is a 3-hour intensive on how to craft haunting horror fiction. How to write horror that lets characters take the lead? What’s the plot framework look like? How the heck do they do it, and how do you do it?

(This class will be live both on Zoom and in person in Southern California.)

Way to be a potential winner —

Drop in the comments below.

Just tell me two things:

a) What’s your favorite horror novel from the last ten years?

b) What are you reading right now (doesn’t have to be horror!)?

Do this by Thursday, noon EST, and I’ll approve all comments and pick two random winners from the commenters to receive those scholarships.

Easy-peasy, blood-a-squeezy.

Just make sure that your account here is using an email address someone can use to reach you; otherwise, you won’t know that you won!

Get it? Got it? Rock on.

PSSSST. Psst! Hey. Hey kid. I hear you like *lowers voice* book events.

Reminder, then, that this week I’m —

At Midtown Scholar on Tuesday the 9th in support of The End of the World As We Know It, with Brian Keene, Somer Canon, and Rich Chizmar.

At Doylestown Bookshop on Wednesday the 10th in support of Delilah S. Dawson’s new rock-and-roll horror novella, House of Idyll — event starts at 6:30PM and Delilah is a true BFF so it’s gonna be a damn good time.

At Doylestown Bookshop again (okay I actually live in the vents there) on Saturday the 13th supporting another amazing rock-and-roll tale — ML Rio’s bad-ass book, Hot Wax.

(Remember too if you can’t make the events, the store can have books for you signed by the authors and then either picked up or mailed to you directly.)

Aaaaaaand, after this week —

10/1/25, I’m at Curious Iguana with Alma Katsu to talk her newest, Fiend. (Details here)

10/10/25, I’m at The End bookstore in Allentown, PA with Martha Wells to talk about her newest, Queen Demon. (Details here.)

10/14/25, I’m at Doylestown Bookshop with Philip Fracassi for Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre. (Details here)

11/7 — 11/9/25, I’m a guest again at Hal-Con in Halifax! Loved doing this and happy to do it again, and I get to see another BFF there, Kevin Hearne.

OKAY, YOU ARE NOW DULY REMINDED.

Go to all of these and collect a prize.

The prize is… uhhh, a ghost. I’ll give you a ghost. It’ll be great. A very nice ghost. Probably. It’s fine. Gonna be great.

OKAY LOVE YOU BYE

In February of this year, I started writing a new novel — this horror-fantasy tale, about a group of demon-blooded misfits plagued by dreams of a mysterious structure — called The Calamities, and it serves as the first part of a duology that completes with the second book, Chaos Reigns.

Lemme tell you, starting a novel in February 2025 was a wee smidge harder than I thought. It was difficult then (and honestly, now) not to be endlessly distracted with, well, *gestures erratically at everything everywhere all the time* and so it was a tougher row to hoe than I expected it to be. Writing some parts of this book felt like pulling teeth, and I was pretty sure everything I wrote was terrible? I mean, I was enjoying myself well enough? But it just felt like there was something between me and the book — something that was, I assume, a giant wall of interference called Reality. Still, I’d go back periodically and re-read parts of it and I liked what I read? So I have no idea how to measure it. To be fair, it’s probably gonna need a robust second draft process to kick the shit out of it — er, I mean, to kick it into shape. But that’s why Jesus invented editors!

It’s got a lot of violence and demony occulty business and sex and scads of diabolical worldbuilding. Still horror, but also fantasy — think about how a book like Library at Mount Char took the mode of urban fantasy but treated that mode like it was straight-up, raw horror. (If you’ve not read Library at Mount Char, then honestly, what are you doing with your life?)

Anyway! It’s fun. It’ll also appeal to those, I think, who like those… weird little WENDIGVERSE connections. (For example, if you recall the cat, Orange Lump, from Black River Orchard? You’ll find that cat in this book, as well! Perhaps even hanging out with his new owner from the end of Orchard.)

I thiiiink it comes out August 2026, but I’ll update you accordingly. So watch this space! Watch it! Never unpin your gaze! AFFIX YOUR STARE UPON ME

And holy shit today’s the day — The End Of The World As We Know It, aka The Stand Anthology, is loosed upon the world in a blood-dimmed tide. Huge honor to be allowed to play in that sandbox. Thanks to Misters Keene and Golden for letting me have my playtime there, and of course, to THE KING HIMSELF for blessing this book and allowing it to happen in the first place. (Thanks also to AP News for the nice review, which shouts out my story, “Grand Junction.”) You can pick up the book at Bookshop.org, if you’d like, or from any of the usual suspects, Amazon, B&N, etc. I also note that if you want a signed/personalized copy, order from Doylestown Bookshop and they can ship directly to you. (True of all of my books! Doylestown rules. As evidenced by the success of their now-annual Dark Ink horror event.)

Aaaaand let’s not forget there are signings for the book literally all over the world today, so hie thee hence to find one:

Note I’ll be at Vortex in Columbia, PA, with Alma Katsu, Brian Keene, Bryan Smith, Somer Canon, and Ron Malfi!

I’ve also got a buuuuunch more events coming up in the next couple months:

9/9/25

Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg, PA for End of the World as We Know It, with Brian Keene, Somer Canon, Richard Chizmar

(Details here)

9/10/25

Doylestown Bookshop with Delilah S Dawson for House of Idyll

(Details here)

9/13/25

Doylestown Bookshop with MJ Rio for Hot Wax

(Details here)

10/14/25

Doylestown Bookshop with Philip Fracassi for Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre

(Details here)

See you at one of these? Some of these? All of these?

Come say hi. Get books signed. We can be creepy together! OKAY BYE

Every day at recess, eleven-year-old Bevvy heads for the shade of her favorite tree¡ªa safe space where she can avoid the other kids and escape into her fantasy books. When she finds a new girl sitting in her spot one afternoon, Bevvy wonders if she might finally have found a friend. But Cat is not exactly friendly. She even starts a fight with Bevvy¡¯s worst enemy and then abandons her to face the consequences.

Later, Cat¡¯s apology is cut short when a strange car rolls up. Cat tells Bevvy to run, drags her into the woods, and then opens a kind of doorway . . . in the air. Bevvy knows magic when she sees it, but this isn¡¯t like one of her books. The world they escape to¡ªteeming with strange creatures, spellcasters, and dragons¡ªis shockingly real. It¡¯s a world at war, with those who wield wild magic battling dark sorcerers.

Bevvy soon discovers that she has her own connection to the wild magic as both girls get caught up in the struggle. But Cat is keeping many secrets. With so much at stake, can Bevvy trust that Cat is truly a friend? And can she trust herself with her newfound power?

1. Your book may have a great origin story! Or it may not!

My last picture book (Luigi, the Spider Who Wanted to Be a Kitten) was inspired by a real-life experience in which I went to stay at a friend¡¯s place in the country while I was between apartments and discovered that a giant spider was also staying at my friend¡¯s place in the country. I¡¯ve always been terrified of spiders, and while I¡¯m better about them than I used to be, I am still not thrilled about sharing indoor space with them. Especially giant country spiders that are like 1000 times bigger than city spiders. (This is not true but it feels true.) Small spiders I can trap in a cup and put outside (I¡¯m not a murderer), but this guy was enormous and would not be contained by human drinkware. So … I named him Luigi and talked to him a lot (mostly about how he should stay far away from me, especially while I was sleeping) and this helped me feel a bit less scared and we both survived our brief cohabitation. Later, in my new home, I wrote a book about a giant spider who was also looking for a new home. It¡¯s a fun story I can tell at book events, and since people often ask where you got the idea for a thing, it¡¯s a relief to have a solid answer.

I do not have a solid answer for Into the Wild Magic. This book started with a single scene of two girls meeting in a schoolyard, but I don¡¯t know where that scene came from or why. Novels, for me, usually grow out of many things that eventually come to connect in ways I didn¡¯t originally see. This makes it harder to answer the question ¡°Where did you get the idea for this book?¡± but that¡¯s okay. The answer is messy and indirect and basically comes down to: I recognized that there was something in that original scene that spoke to me, and I kept coming back to it and writing a little more and a little more until it started to grow into a real story. Which brings me to:

2. If you love something, there¡¯s probably a reason.

I loved the scene of these two girls, even though I didn¡¯t yet know who they were or what was going on. I kept those 685 words in a file for over a year, thinking about them, rereading them, wondering about them, until my writing brain finally felt that little excited spark of keep going. But before that exciting sparky stage, there was the equally important and far-less-fun waiting stage. This is when some part of your subconscious is working on the story without you. Stephen King calls it ¡°the boys in the basement¡±; Damon Knight in his book Creating Short Fiction (formative in my high school writing years) called it ¡°collaborating with Fred.¡±

Sometimes you write a bit of a thing and you know there¡¯s nothing there. (Ask me about my never-finished story about George, the spear of asparagus.) Sometimes you write a bit of a thing and it¡¯s vague or whatever but there¡¯s something you love¡ªsomething you don¡¯t want to just delete and move on from. That¡¯s something to pay attention to. Even if it takes you a very long time to figure out what comes next.

3. You will never get over that one terrible summer at sleepaway camp.

I have a lot of wonderful summer camp memories, but one year a group of kids full-on pretended to be my friends in order to torture and humiliate me. I had an afterschool-special moment where I overheard them talking about me on the other side of an open window and finally realized the truth of what was going on. I am now a grown-ass woman, and obviously totally past the trauma of that betrayal … except I¡¯m not, not really. That feeling of horrible understanding that you are wrong about people you thought liked you, that they actually kind of hate you, and the inevitable follow-up questions of Is it your fault? Are you a bad person? Are you unlovable in some essential way that everyone can see but you? … those are questions that burrow deep into your soul, into your still-developing sense of self, and some part of you will be wrestling with them for the rest of your life. If you¡¯re a writer, this means that you will write a lot about friendship, and about what it means to be a good person, and you will try to create worlds in which your characters make true connections and heal those deep fears that you may still be harboring deep within yourself. This is not a bad thing, although it can be startling to realize that there are some themes you will always come back to no matter what else you think you¡¯re writing about.

4. It’s okay to change your process.

Writing a novel is hard. When you do it once, you may briefly believe that now you Know How to Write a Novel and that the next one will be relatively easy in comparison. You¡¯ve got the roadmap now, and all you need to do is follow it. This might be true for some people, but I don¡¯t think I know any of them. But you do discover some things that work. I know that it helps me to keep a novel journal for each book, to listen to certain songs on repeat during long walks to work out plot problems, and to color-code sections of notes and revision stages in Scrivener in pretty colors to please my crow brain during the hours/days/weeks/years of writing. But while writing this book, I learned a few new things and explored new methods of revising that I much prefer to what I¡¯ve done in the past. Also, I made cool maps and watched amazing slow-motion videos of flying moths. Will these things be part of my process for the next book? Maybe! Or maybe my next book will need different process tweaks. Learning not to hold too tightly to what has worked before leaves you more open for what other things might work now.

5. You can write through Big Life Things.

Over the course of writing this book, I revised and sold and promoted a different book, met and dated the man I would eventually marry, moved in with the man and his two children, squished my apartment office into a tiny corner of our bedroom, adopted two cats, got engaged, got married, became a stepmom, and adopted a corn snake. Also, this big global pandemic happened shortly after the moving-in-together and adopting-cats thing. We had six living creatures (no snake yet) in a two-bedroom apartment under lockdown, two of whom needed help to do remote school every day and one of whom (me) had a full-time work-from-home contract editing job and two books under deadline. Also in that window, we planned and executed our tiny, lovely, outdoor, Covid-era wedding.

Small life things (unplanned errands, ill-timed phone calls, children or pets or spouses who dare to need me while I am working) can sometimes, in the moment, feel as if they may completely derail my writing for the day. But then I remember the conditions under which I wrote in 2020 and early 2021, and I recall that it is possible to write even when the world is terrifying and you have no ideal quiet time anymore and there are all kinds of things to worry about that objectively are far more important than your little book. So I try to keep that in mind, and also try to remember that making art is important even (especially) when big or bad (or both) things are happening in the world. Sometimes it¡¯s also exactly the thing will help you make it through.

Michelle Knudsen is a New York Times best-selling author of more than 50 books for young readers, including the award-winning picture book Library Lion (Time magazine¡¯s 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time) and the novels The Dragon of Trelian (Kids’ Indie Next List; VOYA Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers) and Evil Librarian (YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults; Sid Fleischman Humor Award). She also sometimes writes short stories for older readers, one of which (¡°The Pigeon,¡± Drabblecast 476) was a 2023 BSFA finalist for best audio fiction. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with three humans, two cats, and one snake.

Michelle Knudsen: Website?| Instagram?| Bluesky

Into the Wild Magic: Bookshop.org?| Lofty Pigeon Books (for signed/personalized copies!)?| Amazon?| B&N?| Kobo?| Libro.fm?| Audible

If there’s a chance you’ve been eyeballing The Staircase in the Woods but kinda maybe sorta wanted it a bit cheaper — though here I remind you that libraries exist and are good, actually! — I note now that the book is on sale for $6.99 in e-book format for your electromatic book-reader of choice.

Which is to say, you can find the e-book at Bookshop.org, Kobo, Amazon, B&N, Apple, and so on.

The sale is, I thiiiiink, until tomorrow.

Don’t quote me on that, they don’t give me all the scoops.

Hey, so why should you check it out?

Well, at Vulture, Neil McRobert (whose own Good Boy is a must-read) has it on the list of the best books of 2025 so far, and said of the book: “The Staircase in the Woods?impresses in two distinct ways. First, the haunted other-place beyond the staircase¡¯s last step is a truly hideous proposition, making this Wendig¡¯s darkest novel to date. Second, he writes about the adult resumption of childhood bonds with a messy honesty that sets the book apart from other nostalgia-fests. Friendship may wane, but trauma lasts forever.”

And the New York Public Library (!) calls it one of the best books of 2025 so far, as well, which, huge honor.

And the librarians of Libby said the same — one of the best of 2025.

So, y’know, you should check it out. And not just because our dryer died and our air conditioner started barfing water all over its electronics and so we bought a new dryer but the old one was propane and the new one is electric and now we need a new outlet and a new electrical panel ha ha ha ha AAAAAAhHHHHh aaahhhem. So I mean haha now’s a good time to buy my books, I’m saying. I mean I’m not saying but I’m just saying. Poke poke.

Poke poke.

Seriously, though, thanks to all who have checked out this book. It means a lot! It’s doing… like, pretty well? It has, as of today, outsold Wayward. Like, the entire run of Wayward’s sales from November 2022 until now? Staircase just beat it. And it’ll outrun Black River Orchard’s total sales in a few weeks, I think. It’s already on — I dunno, maybe it’s third printing? Fourth? I don’t keep up, because number of printings is relatively meaningless (a book could have 1000 copies in a print run, or 500, or 10,000) — but it just means, hey, the book is selling, and in fact is selling out, and they need to make more books. It’s a good place to be, so thank you.

Worth noting that I’ll be out in support of this book and the upcoming The Stand anthology (ahhhhh), The End of the World As We Know It —

First up, at Doylestown Bookshop on August 16th is DARK INK 2, an all-day horror-writer-panel-signing-stravaganza. You’ll find Nat Cassidy, Paul Tremblay, Vincent Tirado, Chris Golden, Clay Chapman, Cina Pelayo, Lindy Ryan, Todd Keisling, Sam Rebelein, Dennis Mahoney, John Langan, Chris Panatier, Mary SanGiovanni, Kay Chronister, Diana Rodriguez Wallach, and probably more?? Last year was wild. Amazing event, stocked to the rafters with folks. Here’s the day’s schedule — and I note too if you’re looking for a signed book by me but won’t be there, you can order from the store and I’ll sign there and they’ll ship it to you.

Then: I’ll be at Vortex Books and Comics — the mighty Keene-SanGiovanni joint — in Columbia, PA on August 19th, for the End of the World As We Know It Release Party. Line forms at 4PM. It’s me, Brian Keene, Bryan Smith, Richard Chizmar, Ronald Malfi, Alma Katsu, and Somer Canon.

On September 9th, I’ll be at Midtown Scholar with Keene, Somer Canon and Rich Chizmar to talk The End of the World As We Know It.

And I have one more as-yet-unannounced con coming up, which may or may not be a cool convention in Canada in November that I’ve done before, but I don’t think that’s for me to say, yet.

OKAY BYE