“When Your Child Strays From God” is out today in Clarkesworld!

My short story “When Your Child Strays From God” was published today at Clarkesworld, one of the very best and toughest venues for science fiction these days. I’ve been submitting to them for years, and I’m so proud that this story found a home there.

It’s about a devout Christian mother who decides to hunt down her runaway teenage son by taking a drug that will allow her to enter a terrifying shared hallucination with him… and in the process learns all kinds of things about her son and herself and her husband that she didn’t really want to know.

It’s my first attempt to write a “funny” story, although of course I can’t stop myself from ALSO trying to punch you in the heart and make you cry. If I was successful… I AM SORRY.

This story owes a big debt to my comrades in Altered Fluid, many of whom gave me phenomenal critiques that made it a lot stronger: Alaya Dawn Johnson, Alyssa Wong, Paul Berger, Kris Dikeman, Richard Bowes, Lilah Wild, Matthew Kressel, Devin Poore, and Mercurio D. Rivera!!