Sever, The Perfume All At Once and Mary Monster. And The Witch.

There are days when I think Sever is the best thing I've ever published. It's a novella about a tiny college town that's inexplicably set upon by four ax murderers. Sever is a long and extremely bloody metaphor for growing up. For saying goodbye to the consequence-free days of college and accepting adulthood.

The novella is narrated by one of its only survivors, a Finny-like character named Leo. His perspective is extremely limited. He's just a 21-year-old guy, mostly decent but kind of self-involved in the way college kids usually are.

A year later, I wrote an unsettling short story about three teenage witches. The powerful Rapathia, the devious Josephine, and the unreliable narrator Camille, who is possibly a homicidal lunatic. This story obviously existed in the Sever universe. (Leo actually makes a cameo.) But there was a problem. In Sever, the witches meet an inglorious and abrupt end. For the two pieces to coexist, there had to be more to the story.

Something Leo couldn't see.

So, with my short story as my first chapter, I started writing. How did the witches get to Epshire? How do they interact with the various ax murders? And what really happened the night of the final ritual?

At some point, I decided my witches existed in the same universe as Robert Eggers' brilliant film The Witch, which makes this new novella fan fiction, in a way. But instead of Black Phillip, the devil deer from Mary Monster showed up. And like that, everything became connected.

This new novella is neither a sequel or a prequel to Sever. It's the same series of events told from the reverse perspective. It'll probably take me a few months to get it edited and published. But right now, I'm just high on finishing a rough draft.

Sever will be free from April 2 to April 6. So if you haven't read it, now's the time.