shameless self-promotion

This month we have a new issue of Fuckit, featuring my story, “And the Forest Sings of Secrets and the Dead.”

This one’s a fun one.

The theme for this issue is “How to Counter a Culture,” and I have always been weirdly fascinated with Puritans. Like many a young American lass, I went through a Salem witch trials phase; The Scarlet Letter was one of the books I read for English class that I actually enjoyed; “Young Goodman Brown” clearly stuck with me, as well. And while I’m not a huge Joyce Carol Oates fan, there’s that direct line from “Young Goodman Brown” and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been.”

And hey, religious extremists, am I right? Sinners in the hands of an angry god, yo. Name your sins to control them, God loves you so He gives you cash, the Elect: are you really saved or are you screwed?

This story largely came out of a K. Tempest Bradford workshop–I can’t remember if it was the Unwriting workshop or the Revive Your Will to Write?–but we played a writing game, and the bulk of the story came out of that exercise. The title came from me realizing that this is, essentially, your typical 16-year-old Hot Topic goth girl dressed up in Puritan garb and scribbling in her goat-bone-studded journal, devastated to be missing MCR by like 200 years.

I love teenagers. And drama.

So does Mr. Brown.