Amusement Park Arcana is Available to Preorder!

 

my latest novella, Amusement Park Arcana, is coming July 15, 2026!

think Action Park meets The Backrooms in 1994

Riley’s best friend Tara went missing last October from the shitty amusement park where she worked. By spring, the police are no closer to having any answers, so Riley’s taking it in her own hands.

She just knows Tara’s still at the park somewhere, and an uncanny phone call on Riley’s first day as a park employee only confirms that. The quest to bring Tara or her body home draws Riley further from her family and her boyfriend as she spends more time in the park’s liminal spaces and opening day looms large.

ebook preorders: https://books2read.com/AmusementParkArcana

paperback preorders (coming soon!)

Out now! Exit Ghost, by Jennifer R. Donohue

 My debut novel, EXIT GHOST, is now out in the world! 

You can order it in ebook on nearly platform, in hardcover through Bookshop.org (this is an affiliate link) or Amazon or your local indie! You can request your local library order it, because your local library does want to know what its patrons want to read, and probably have a request/suggestion form right on their website!

However you read Exit Ghost, be it through your own purchase or a library borrow, please do rate and/or review it on Amazon, and Goodreads

Preorder my DEBUT NOVEL Exit Ghost

 That's right, you heard it here first (if you didn't see it on Twitter, or Instagram, or hear it from me in person), I'm releasing my debut novel, Exit Ghost, on March 7, 2023!

I queried this novel for 2 years, starting right before the pandemic really kicked up stateside. Not the best timing on my part, with what otherwise would've been great timing; witchy books are/have been in, and this is a witchy book!

So what is it about?  Here's the cover copy:

After her father is murdered and an attempt is made on her life, New Jersey heiress and witch Juliet Duncan is supposed to be concentrating on getting better and moving forward. Instead, Jules summons her father's ghost using her blood and tears and his old rotary phone to answer the question: who did it? He reveals it was Hector, her dad’s best friend and her mom’s new fiancé.

Certain her life is still in danger, Jules flees the family estate to the Asbury Park apartment she shares with her best friend and fellow witch, Ashes. When another friend joins them, all three women get caught up with a secret boyfriend who’s also big into magic, but in all the wrong ways, all while Jules wrestles with whether her father’s ghost was telling the truth. But what Jules does know is that power has its cost, and she is more than willing to pay the price in order to get her revenge.

Where can you get it? Pretty much everywhere! I'm doing the ebook in my typical way, with distribution far and wide, and the hardcover is through IngramSpark, which means that bookstores and libraries who order through Ingram can just order it with no special considerations necessary. Indeed, I would be thrilled if you'd request your local library order it. A handy link where you can choose whatever digital store you please (and some physical stores) is here:

https://books2read.com/ExitGhost

It is already listed on both Goodreads and Storygraph, and if you do read it, I encourage (beg) you to rate and/or review it there and on Amazon!

Available to preorder! The Drowned Heir, by Jennifer R. Donohue

 Surprise, I have a new dark fantasy/horror novella coming out at the end of August! 

I am self publishing it. It is available for ebook preorder (with the hardcover to follow)

"When her uncle dies at sea, a third child with no place in society undergoes a ceremony to house his spirit and take his role, diminishing the family’s loss. But her uncle’s spirit hasn’t settled the way it’s supposed to, and will not content itself with shore-bound business. Her uncle’s spirit insists, angrily, that it was not just a storm that killed him and wrecked his ship, not a rogue wave; it was an unthinkably large monster.

Then his lover comes knocking with news of an adult son who has set sail along the same shipping lane, and dead uncle and living niece must work together to save a son neither of them knew existed."

AND I have a blurb:   "Profoundly poetic and infused with fascinating magic and myth, this book spoke to me deeply of the struggle between hereditary duty and the yearning for adventure. Hungry monsters and rogue waves lurk with ill intent below family secrets kept too long. I could taste the salt water in every line -- a triumph of nautical storytelling, as fascinatingly and carefully crafted as a swift ship." —Premee Mohamed, Nebula Award-winning author of And What Can We Offer You Tonight

Available now, in The Future Fire: "The Mountain's Wife"

A few years ago, I read a couple of longform articles on Mt. Everest and the way that sometimes bodies became like landmarks to other climbers, and the subsequent recovery efforts that were made to get those deceased climbers down off the mountain. In the way of things, it left an impression, but kind of just got loaded into my subconscious. 

And that's where "The Mountains Wife" came from. It's a fantasy story, maybe a little bit of a horror story. There are dogs but (spoilers) the dogs are okay.  The narrator (and indeed, almost everybody in the story) is unnamed, another of my hallmarks.

The Future Fire does a great job when it comes to publishing (This is my second story with them; last year, they published "Know They Will Die, Under the Salt of It.") Their editing is smooth and reasonable, and stories have illustrations! What a luxury, as an author, to have an illustrated story.

Additionally, this is my 29th short story publication! This does count prints and reprints, but it is 29 times that somebody read my story, said "Yes, we want to publish this" and did! 

Stay tuned next month for number 30...

Get the latest! "How Do You Grow?"

 My latest short story is available to read in issue 4 of Hexagon magazine! 

It is called "How Do You Grow?" and is about symbiotic teeth, and growing up, and the things that adults tell children sometimes as they're growing up. The title is from the Anne Sexton poem "Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman"

In his Quick Sip Review, Charles Payseur calls it "an unsettling but effective read," and I do tend to trust Charles' judgement. 

Strange Horizons annual fundraiser!

Strange Horizons is a very, very good online magazine that publishes scifi/fantasy/whatever short stories, poems, columns, and reviews. I've been reading them for years, and been submitting stories to them for years as well. No "yes" from them yet, but I have gotten some very good personal rejections from them as well, not just forms.

They've got 8 days and change left in the fundraiser, and are at about $7500 out of their baseline $15,000 goal. It would be really great to see them reach it! They've got some great things they want to do, like publish stories in translation, do interactive stories, that kind of thing.

If you haven't checked them out, go. Do so. Here are some things I've really liked recently that they've published:

Million-Year Elegies: Oviraptor, by Ada Hoffman

The Beef, by J.D. Moyer

Noise Pollution, by Alison Wilgus

little stomach, by Charlotte Geater


You can donate to them via Network for Good, PayPal, subscribe to them via Patreon, or even send in a physical payment.  Strange Horizons is a 501 (c) (3) not for profit organization and so in the United States, donations are tax deductible.

Where Am I to Go, Now that I've Gone Too Far

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently on how young adult fiction has become "too dark". I was interested and perplexed by this kind of an article and argument. There is lots of dark young adult stuff; there is also still a fair number of bubblegum and sunshine high school and boyfriend style young adult fiction. A lot of these books address "real teen issues", though, perhaps more than they used to. Judy Blume has always been very forthright in her writing of these sorts of things, and I think that many current authors maybe be taking a page from her book.