MANNEQUINS FROM OUTER SPACE!
Last week, I ran around a department store taking videos of mannequins. How did I get here? Well…
6 years later…
The last time I wrote a blog post was back in 2020. Wow. Look at the time! It’s been eighty-four six years and I finally have news worth starting a Substack for (RIP MailChimp, we never got along well anyway).
Where have I been? Very active on Instagram, actually. Not so much the other socials. But if you haven’t been following me, then you need to know that I’ve never stopped writing. Every year, without fail, I wrote manuscripts and crawled through the query trenches.
Exhausted? Yes. Disheartened? Nope. Not for long, anyway. Because I simply couldn’t stop writing new stories.
And then, 2025 happened…
new literary agent:
In September 2025, I signed on with Bethany Weaver of the Weaver Literary Agency! I’m thrilled to have her as my literary agent. She’s absolutely brilliant and so supportive of my stories. I’ve been having a wonderful time working with her.
2025 short story publications:
“Stole My Heart.” Micromance Magazine, February 2025.
“The Discovery of Iridessa.” Maison Laurêve’s Timeless Ephemera print newspaper, Midnight at the Alchemist’s Apothecary Issue, May 2025.
I didn’t link Maison Laurêve’s website because it looks like the magazine folded, but you can see what it looked like here from my print copy. Such a gorgeous whimsy-filled newspaper magazine:
the rainbow was a paid actor (I have a lot of sun catchers in my windows).
mannequins from outer space chapbook is published in 2026!
Before signing with Bethany, I was still in the query trenches and looking for other opportunities to have smaller works published. Plus, I was itching to get back to my roots from my Figment.com days and write something like a serial novel. When I found out Dancing Girl Press just opened its reading period for its chapbook series in Summer 2025, I set to work. I wanted to write a complete story told in a series of connected flash fiction pieces, which suits the chapbook format. I just needed an idea. And after trying a new on for size, I found I really wanted to write about mannequins…
My chapbook, Mannequins from Outer Space, was accepted for publication late 2025 and has only just been released this month! The chapbook is available to order from Dancing Girl Press directly.
What’s the chapbook about?
Mannequins from Outer Space contains interconnected flash fiction pieces set in a small town secretly inhabited by sentient mannequins. Maëlys, a misfit mannequin, yearns for a purpose beyond modeling for humans. Falling for the charming salon mannequin next door seems like the answer at first, but when heartbreak follows, she learns that a better life may be waiting for her beyond the stars.
I’ve always loved mannequins. I have Opinions about them, including my long-standing gripe with the minimalist trend towards faceless mannequins. No, they’re not cool or hip. They look like robots. You can’t read their expressions because they don’t have any, which makes it harder for our imaginations to spark. While I was drafting, I read Show Windows: 75 Years of The Art of Display by Barry James Wood. If you’ve ever stopped to admire a window display, you need to read this book. It’s fantastic. Wood said it better than I have when he wrote:
“By it’s very nature, display is synonymous with change. Two weeks, at most, is the allotted lifetime for most window displays—a short span for a work of art. But it is art nonetheless. Display artists are creators, seers who capture and distill images in which we look at ourselves and our fantasies.”
Mannequins can be more than just an object meant to sell a product. I’d argue that done right, they can blow the dust off anyone’s imagination. Ironically, the mannequins in my chapbook have no interest in selling products or putting up with the humans who care for them. After all, they’re technically from another planet.
I hope you enjoy the chapbook—and if you do, please please please be weird and find your own local mannequins to pose it with like I did!
As soon as my author copies arrived, I ran out to a local department store to build an IG Reel for Mannequins from Outer Space. Gut instinct took me to what turned out the perfect store for this, because for some reason, they had at a dozen or more different types of mannequins throughout the two floors. How? Why? I’ll never know, but I was so glad. You can watch the IG Reel I made here, but I’ll share some of my favorite photos I took from that outing:
Big thanks to my friend Alicia Thompson for the inspiration to make the following bullet list. It’s such a fun way to share what’s going on outside of writing!
currently…
watching? Believe it or not, the 25th anniversary of The Mummy Returns just passed and I went to my local AMC to watch it on the glorious big screen. Hot Take: I have always believed that if Imhotep had FAILED to put Anuck-Su-Namun’s soul into her reincarnated body, they both would have survived. She was smitten and reckless before she got her memories back. She would have dodged falling rocks to pull up him out of that pit. I said what I said.
reading? After visiting Lighthouse Books, ABBA for the first time (how did I not know it was in Dade City?), I was browsing the art section and found Ophelia’s World by Michele Durkson Clise, which turned out to be one of the most beautiful books I’ve read. It’s about a bear that runs a Parisian shop; she shares a year’s worth of adventures with her friends. Serendipitous timing for me to discover this book, because window displays play a big role in Ophelia’s World. Each of her friends pose in the window at her shop, temporarily taking on the honor of being her mannequins.
listening to? Monster Rally. The downtempo music of my dreams. I own 10 of his albums and I plan on buying them all. Keep ‘em coming. If I had to pick a favorite song, “Golden Shores” is a perfect sunny afternoon at the beach, minus the sunburn. Bonus is that Monster Rally’s album covers are collages, I mean come on:
playing? I’m notoriously bad at finding time to play video games, but I had to try the Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream demo. I’m new to Tomodachi despite being a Nintendo girlie since I was a kid, but I’m already in love with the Mii character customization and potential for chaotic humor.
weirdest thing i’ve seen on my antiquing adventures:
Before you go…
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