The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories

From acclaimed and New York Times best-selling YA authors Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff comes The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories.

• A vampire locked in a cage in the basement, for good luck.
• Bad guys, clever girls, and the various reasons why the guys have to stop breathing.
• A world where fires never go out (with references to vanilla ice cream).

These are but a few of the curiosities collected in this volume of short stories by three acclaimed practitioners of paranormal fiction.

But The Curiosities is more than the stories. Since 2008, Maggie, Tessa, and Brenna have posted more than 250 works of short fiction to their website Their goal was simple: create a space for experimentation and improvisation in their writing—all in public and without a backspace key. In that spirit, The Curiosities includes the stories and each author's comments, critiques, and kudos in the margins. Think of it as a guided tour of the creative processes of three acclaimed authors.

“"These experimental, unedited short stories showcase the many faces of horror--goth, faerie, ghostly, grotesque, lyrical, vengeful, and nasty-cool. Some clusters of tales are responses to a subject prompt like 'King Arthur' or 'puddles'; others are one-offs. Creatures such as vampires, dragons, and zombies are joined by original creations such as butterflies in temporary human form. The stories all tend toward the traditional structure of a surprise ending. The pieces were first published online by the three authors as an exercise in creativity and criticism, and the presentation here is innovative, incorporating critique comments, hand-written marginalia describing the writer's process, doodles, short essays, and diagrams. The stories themselves are strong, but the apparatus can get in the way; the self-congratulatory tone of the comments wears thin, and some of the process notes ('I suck at inventing new slang') add little to the reader's understanding or pleasure." --The Horn Book Magazine”

"The end result of the combination of stories and formal and informal commentary is that readers will feel a stronger, more intimate connection with these writers as people, as well as gain insight into the kinds of support and critique that are useful in story-making and story-sharing." --Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Tessa Gratton is the acclaimed author of six young adult novels. She currently lives in Kansas with her partner, two cats, and her mutant mutt named Grendel. Maggie Stiefvater is the New York Times bestselling author of more than ten books for young readers. She lives in Virginia with her husband and their two children. Brenna Yovanoff is the New York Times bestselling author of five young adult novels. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Colorado State University. She currently lives in Denver with her husband.

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