These are my confessions: since late February I’ve been absorbed in a zine project and haven’t had a lot of energy for writing other things, like the monthly long-form newsletter. You all will be the first to see said zine when it’s ready (other than people around upstate New York who might be visiting the 518 Zinefest on Saturday March 28 and will get first crack at print copies). But for now, there’s nothing in my brain except a fine cobweb of connections between The Fog, Enys Men, and Greenwitch.

Thus I present a couple of free stories, specifically Year of the Fire Horse-adjacent stories either behind a paywall or out of print. The first is “The Devil and Dice,” originally published by Luna Station Quarterly in 2019. LSQ’s Patreon is now hosting its entire archives, which were moved offline in part due to the onset of mass LLM scraping, and you can access them if you join, which is a cool perk. “The Devil and Dice” was also reprinted last year by Nat 1/Gaslamp Pulp in its Florida Man anthology. And now it’s available for you, dear readers, right here.

“Eel and Bloom,” the first story I wrote that featured limerunners, was published by Worldweaver Press and Canadian lady of letters Rhonda Parrish all the way back in 2017, which seems wild. Equus officially went out of print last year, which is bittersweet; I really enjoyed the Magical Menageries anthologies, and I’m still proud of “Eel & Bloom” as the jumping-off point for a fruitful stable of stories. You can read it here.

I hope you enjoy these limey yarns! Have you encountered any other horsey lit so far this year?