If you enjoyed “A Petrified Heart,” buckle up…  The adventure has just begun.  I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve sold my first novella, which builds upon my novelette “A Petrified Heart” and will show the full story arc for this world and characters.  Look for Thrice Petrified from Of Metal and Magic Publishing, a press specializing in secondary world fantasy.  I’ll share updates as I have them. 

In other news, if you’re in the Portland area, I hope you can come out to my hometown on Oct. 26^th to meet local horror authors and hear us give readings at the Beaverton City Library from 1pm-3pm. 

Next month I’ll have a new short story in Flame Tree Publishing’s Sun Rising Short Stories and a new poem in Corvid Queen. And keep your eyes peeled for the HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. XI. 

Want to hear some poetry for Halloween?  The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association is updating their annual online SFPA Halloween readings throughout this month, and my poem “Pumpkin Ash and Cypress Knees” is part of this year’s batch.  My thanks to Silvatiicus Riddle for curating this year’s selections and including my poem.  Keep checking for new additions, too. 

The Horror Writers Association just revealed the cover of the HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. XI, and it looks awesome!  I’m excited for when I can share my new poem in there with you. 

As a reminder, if you want to hear more of my dark poetry, you can check out the video of last year’s Haunted Tales and Eerie Melodies event. 

And finally, if you want to hear me in person, I’ll be doing a reading and a couple of panels at OryCon 44 here in Portland later this month.  Here’s where you can find me: 

Let’s All Go to the Lobby…

October 19, 2024, 3:00pm-3:50pm PDT

When was the last time you went to a movie in a theater? Streaming and the internet were already killing the theater industry, and Coronapocalypse almost finished it off. But after the successes of Top Gun II, Avatar II, and The Super Mario Bros., there is a glimmer of hope. What is it that draws us back into a large darkened room full of strangers? Why do we still go? And what does the future look like for theatrical releases?

Panelists:  Katherine Quevedo (moderator), Mark Niemann-Ross, Alan Olsen, Tom Whitmore

Katherine Quevedo Reading

October 19, 2024, 5:30pm-5:55pm PDT

Devils in the Details

October 20, 2024, 3:00pm-3:50pm PDT

How much description is too much? How do you include worldbuilding, clues, sensory information, and other important context without dumping, As-You-Know-Bobbing, or going on elliptical journeys to the Outer Limits of Reader/audience patience? Attend and find out!

Panelists:  Dayle A. Dermatis, Rosiee Thor, John M Lovett, Katherine Quevedo, Emily Suvada

My new story “The Dancer’s Body at Rest” is available to read in Abyss & Apex.  I’ve been submitting there for a long time (since 15 years ago, in fact—goes to show how I’ve grown as a writer), and I’m thrilled to have a story in this longtime publication at last. 

I’ve been to Spain twice, once when I was in high school, and years later with my husband.  Both times I saw a flamenco performance that blew me away.  I was dying to set a story there.  Not only was the flamenco inspiring, I also loved the architecture, gardens, fountains… 

I researched the culture and music, and I brought in some of my own insecurities about exploring a setting in my fiction where, yes, I have ancestral roots, but the connection is further removed than I usually tackle.  I decided to lean into that thematically.  The result is a story about performance, imposter syndrome, duende (and its accompanying frisson), pain management, and the collaborative nature of certain artforms. 

As we get closer to October, this seems like a great time to share the recordings of last year’s Haunted Tales and Eerie Melodies event, part of the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program.  I read a selection of dark poems to live piano, and the others read horror short fiction to their live musical accompaniment.  Enjoy! 

• Katherine Quevedo and Katie Bennett
• Remy Nakamura with Kate Ristau and Matt Brislawn
• Elle Mitchell and Julian Kosanovic
• Sarah Walker and Obadiah Baird
• Nathan Carson and Erin Jane Laroue

Also, the Horror Writers Association has announced their Poetry Showcase Vol. XI table of contents, and I’m excited to have a poem selected for inclusion:  “Peter Pumpkin Eater’s Most Delectable Carving.”  Keep your eyes peeled for news about the anthology’s release. 

Coming soon, a new short story in Abyss and Apex… 

In my series of essays for Sidequest on writing poetry inspired by video games, I’ve just added “Level Up Your Poetry, Part 5: When Words Take Iconic Shape.”  This time I focus on concrete poetry, or visual poetry (sometimes shortened to “vispo”).  It’s a form that aligns nicely with how important graphics are in the source material.  I’ve played with this sculptural approach lately and wanted to share some of my trials and tribulations, as well as some inspiration. 

I’m a guest on Pages on the Tongue, an all-new podcast about short fiction!  Host Michelle Murray was so gracious and fun to talk to.  She’s also traveled to Ecuador, so she had me read “Venom in the Cloud Forest” from Myriad Lands Vol. 2, and then we had a marvelous time discussing my story and our travel experiences, and many other topics:  entering story through setting, how my desire to write a villain shaped the narrative, putting indigenous perspectives at the forefront, etc. 

This seems like a good time to share something I read in the article “Indigenous women are showing us how to fight for environmental and human rights”:  According to Sônia Guajajara, “Indigenous peoples make up only 5% of the world’s population, yet we protect 82% of the remaining biodiversity on the planet.”  Pretty staggering. 

Michelle put a lot of care and time into adding sound effects to my story for an extra immersive experience.  Please support the Pages on the Tongue podcast by downloading the episode and watching for her next guest. 

My new poem “Rain at Waimea Falls” is part of the Happy Poems issue of Poemeleon.  I wrote this piece after a trip to Hawaii where we got caught in a warm downpour while visiting the titular waterfall. 

Ah, happy poems.  The more I’ve been researching poetry chapbooks in recent years, the more I’m struck by how many seem to center on trauma.  Maybe it’s just me.  But I love variety and range, and I figured my poetry should be no exception.  So why not tackle sheer pleasure, awe, joy for a change?  Not that there isn’t a need for darker topics and working our way toward healing.  But I was excited to see a call for happy poems and am pleased to be part of the themed issue. 

By the way, my friend Richard Leis has an absolute stunner of a Hawaiian waterfall poem, “How We Will Walk Through the Extremely Green,” in Harpy Hybrid Review.  Please go read that one, too! 

Am I obsessed much with forests and jungles? 

I woke up this morning to the news that my story “Song of the Balsa Wood Bird” got a mention in the Reactor (formerly Tor.com) post “Seven Speculative Stories About Preserving History and Culture.”  This seems like a fitting time to mention my family’s road trip earlier this month, in which we preserved a bit of my personal history—and veered from it to put ourselves in a forest setting. 

We recreated my childhood summer road trips to the Bay Area to visit my maternal grandparents.  That is, we followed the path back up, spending the night in Ashland on the way; on the way down, though, we took a different route to see the famed redwoods. 

It was magnificent.  I’d researched long-lived trees such as these for a certain recent story of mine (and hopefully that’s not too much of a spoiler).  Getting to touch them was something else.  I loved feeling so small, like a character in “A Petrified Heart.”  My husband noted how quiet and still everything was, and sure enough, we didn’t hear much birdsong, rather like in “Song of the Balsa Wood Bird.” 

I’ll be talking about another of my rainforest stories, “Venom in the Cloud Forest,” on a podcast next month.  And a new story, “Ree in the Domain of Scavengers,” is coming out in Flame Tree Publishing’s Sun Rising Short Stories the month after that.  And I had such a kick setting a horror story in the rainforest with “Discount Night at the Haunted Eco Lodge.” 

Okay, yes, I’m obsessed. 

Anyway, San Francisco was great.  We went to some of my favorite spots, including Pier 39 and Chinatown.  We laid flowers at the grave of my grandparents and one of my uncles.  In that sense, I did visit Grandma and Grandpa, like all those summers growing up, preserving a bit of my own family history and bringing the next generation along. 

Once in a while I like to take a break from short stories and poetry to write about the act of writing.  Most recently, I wrote a guest column for Angry Gable Press called “Motivation Through Collaboration with Your Past and Future Selves.”  Any single approach won’t work for every author, but I hope others find it a useful perspective to consider. 

I’m also putting the final touches on a new entry in my Level Up Your Poetry series for Sidequest.  More on that when it’s published. 

Looking ahead, I’ve had a couple of poem acceptances (for Star*Line and Corvid Queen), and I’ve been invited to contribute to a short story anthology—more details soon! 

My poem “Rhapsody in Sage” is part of Extrasensory Overload: an anthology of speculative excess from Angry Gable Press.  This book gathers all types of speculative short stories and verse in which the senses are stretched to their limits, mixed and mashed, and otherwise played with.  I’m honored to be included with all the wonderful writers in here (Angela Yuriko Smith, Ai Jiang… too many to list!). 

I had fun writing this poem after an evening hanging out with my mom and sisters during a family trip to the Oregon high desert.  The sky was vast and filled with bright stars.  At one point, my big sister stepped out onto the cabin’s deck, intending to demonstrate her stargazing app.  The tech didn’t cooperate.  My mind took it from there.  And she was a great sport about me memorializing it through a cosmic horror poem.