The past week had been a busy one! Because of scheduling I ended up doing two readings back to back. The first reading I did was for the wonderful Story Hour, organized by the awesome Laura Blackwell and Daniel Marcus. I read my dark fantasy story “We Are Here to Be Held.” I was paired with Michelle Belanger, whose reading I enjoyed immensely, and I ended up having so much fun! The fundraiser I chose for the reading was Letjaha, a network of assistance for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. The video of our reading has been uploaded on Facebook where you can watch it without an account. It has currently amassed 4k views!

The second reading I did was for Strong Women-Strange Worlds. This time I read a flash horror story called “Cherry Wood Coffin.” This was a lot of fun too, and I got to hear excerpts from some pretty amazing books that varied a lot genre-wise. All the readers were incredibly talented people and I am honored to have been in their company.

On to another piece of news, my short story Tomatoes is now free to read in Khōréō, issue #1.4! There is also a stunning reading of the story by the amazing Kat Kourbeti. This story was the first one I wrote during Clarion West. It happened because I had read Yoko Ogawa’s story “Tomatoes and the Full Moon” in her collection titled “Revenge” and was hellbent on writing a story that had “Tomatoes” in its title. Stephen Graham Jones was our instructor for that week and he was just the right person to help me figure out the focus and the ending of this story along with my wonderful classmates.

It is the story of two witch sisters as they navigate their own duty to their family at the cost of their freedom. It’s a story with Greek sensibilities, especially when it comes to families and filial duty. It’s also a story about the dangers of greed. But there’s also magic, and darkness and body horror and of course, tomatoes.

The story was reviewed at Tor Nightfire! The wonderful Aigner Loren Wilson had some nice things to say. Here is an excerpt:

Triantafyllou balances the dark in the story with the emotional pulse of a family falling apart and dying, and in the process creates a wonderfully touching account of death and love.

I hope you give this one a read and enjoy it!