ERIN KEATING
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Short Fiction

Forthcoming

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  • Bleak Midwinter II: Solstice Light (Quill & Crow Publishing House): "Deserving of Warmth"
  • Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic (Cosmic Horror Monthly): "Piece by Piece"
  • Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things: "The Word Hoarder"
  • ​Kaleidotrope: "Time Between Her Teeth"​

Bitter Girl, Hunger

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Tales to Terrify
Episode 572

"The ground has teeth and greedy hands. It rumbles with a hollow, hungry ache for the plump peach flesh and corn silk hair of girls." 


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Everyone's Got a Little Devil in Them

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It Was All a Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right
Ed. Brandon Applegate | Hunger Shadow Press
"In the winter, the Devil’s cloven hooves bore deep tracks in the crusted-over snow. In the spring, the Devil’s claws slashed gouges into saplings. In the summer, the Devil’s winged silhouette rose from the mist in the cranberry bog. And I’d keep my head down and my mouth shut, so much like a mouse that I could never be mistaken for a devil. Almost never.

Except for those gray nights in late October, when the moon hung low and ripe, and the whole world seemed to crackle—those were the most dangerous times. Because those nights, people did more than tell stories about the Devil. 
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They tried to catch it. "
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Cover art by Evangeline Gallagher

Dance the Sky Bright

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Medusa Tales
Issue 2 | July/August 2022​
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"When the star had descended two days ago, it had pulled the night sky down with it. A veil had been cast over the mountainside—the sun did not rise, the wind did not blow, and anyone who tried to leave through the narrow rocky pass was lost to the shadows. The star would return to its seat in the sky—bringing back the sun and wind and light—only when the townsfolk offered it a young woman for a dance. And the star had chosen Esther as its dance partner." 
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Discounts for the End of Days

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The Vanishing Point
Issue 4 | Summer 2022​
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"It’s hard to tell, those first few days, that the apocalypse is coming. If Tony had known, he would have raised the price of toilet paper sooner."
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Cover art by Julian Aguilar Faylona

Chrysanthemum

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Haven Speculative
Issue 3: The Dry Issue | March 2022​
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"Mama didn’t weep when the world Dried Up. When the smoke choked the sun. When the sky turned orange. When the birds died mid-flight. Mama didn’t weep when the world Dried Up.

But she’s weeping now."
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Cover art by Saleha Chowdhury 

The Future in a Wash Basin

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Metaphorosis Magazine
March 2022 Issue

​"This was the land where her mother and her gran had practiced their craft. This was the land where her own daughters would learn their arts. Even though the town seemed to be growing smaller each day, she couldn’t bear to leave Schull Harbor and the bones of the women who came before her. This land was her inheritance.​"​​
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"The Future in a Wash Basin" also appears in Metaphorosis Books's Reading 5X5 x3: Changes anthology, ed. B. Morris Allen.
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Cover art by Carol Wellart

Sleeping Giants

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Luna Station Quarterly 
Issue 49 | March 2022​
Originally published in The Gateway Review
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"Annie Warren spoke in tongues – every time she opened her mouth garbled sound flooded out. The only people on God’s green Earth who knew were her ma and pa. They told her never to speak in front of strangers, and the girl listened." 
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Cover art by Caroline Jamhour

Carry On

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Alternate Histories:
​Fiction on The Coil

​"The night of the invasion was the first night I slept in my own bed instead of on the cold metal bunks of the communal air shelter. Carnations were starting to bloom in the window box outside. The flowers couldn’t tell that the world was ending."
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Bright Arrow

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Recipient of Roanoke College's Andrew Murphy Prize
On Concept's Edge
​Issue 28
"Above the wind, she heard one word: draíochta.  Magic.  The word sunk into her skin and filled her bones.  Deep in her marrow, it made her feel human again."
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Cover art by Brieanah Gouveia

There Are No Stars in the Afterlife

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The Passed Note
Issue Three
"My brother was crazy.  I had told him that even when I was alive. I planned to tell him now that I was dead too.  Seeing ghosts is crazy – even we think so.  ​"

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Cover art by Randi Janelle

The Music Man

Cuckoo Chronicle
Issue 10
"He had worked in a studio all of his life – even before speaking was illegal. Once speaking was prohibited, the nation experienced several years in turmoil as the deafening silence invaded the minds of the citizens. On the streets, the rhythm of footfalls and the whisper of the wind replaced the white noise of countless conversations. People were being suffocated by the wordless world around them."
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