Wolf Children at Kaleidotrope.

I wrote Wolf Children in what felt like a fever haze in the summer of 2015, but if a haze lasted weeks rather than hours, by taking a set of stories that I thought were unrelated, but then realizing they weren’t.

So it is a weird story, like a dream. But I am a weird person, like a dream’s character. Everything about Wolf Children is its own closed fictional ecosystem. I don’t really feel like living in reality anymore, but I wouldn’t live in Wolf Children for anything, but it’s strangely prescient considering how long ago I wrote it and how relevant it is to the BIG BAD THING I can’t discuss about my job. The world, any world, even the ones I make up, aren’t made for women, especially weird ones. Eldritch ones I suppose. Like Enid too. Just weird women who don’t fit in and feel it every second. This past year, this line from The Little Mermaid:

every step you take will be as if you were treading upon sharp knives, so sharp as to draw blood

I know this line. I live it now.

Photo source — interestingly the file name says it is a female wolf, which, if you’ve read Wolf Children, is fitting.