Published in El Paso Herald, Texas, 1928

Who ran this bizarre boy's school in the backwoods of West Virginia–my home state–? What really happened to those poor boys? I used the ad to build out a story-world and characters, but wanted to add a folkloric twist, like a big bad wolf.

Ol’ Smokefoot came out of my research on the Victorian ghoul “Spring-Heeled Jack” who was widely witnessed attacking women at night, reportedly ripping women’s clothing off and assaulting them. In a time when rape was pervasive but unmentionable, this fiend became the hook to hang repressed societal violence. I was interested in Ol’ Smokefoot as both a creepy cryptid symbolic entity and the hook to hang the exploitation of the school.

Illustration of Spring-heeled Jack, from the 1867 serial Spring-heel'd Jack: The Terror of London

As for developing Paul’s character, I wanted to push myself to write from a young boy’s perspective, one that is outside of my embodied experience. I was particularly inspired by Flannery O’Connor’s The River, which is written from a young boy’s POV and has a wonderfully developed child’s logic.

As I wrote–and rewrote–Paul, I found a lot of myself in him, both of us are fairly haunted and sometimes brave. I want to see what happens to him next, so I already have more serialized Buggy stories brewing.

KMWR: What draws you to the horror genre and to the literary monster?

TR: I am interested in horror as a literary lens to view personal and societal fears. A monster is a hook to hang our dirty laundry on, the grotesque parts of ourselves and communities that are hard to look at on their own.

KMWR: In your author bio, you describe short stories as a way to come up for air from novel writing. I'd love to know your thoughts about how writing short prose adds to the skill of crafting novel-length works. What do you take away from short stories and what do you leave behind when returning to the novel?

TR: There is no time to wander off into indulgent tangents in a short story. I like that immediacy and demand that I don’t get too caught up in waxing eloquent rather than just trying to tell a story that feels true. It’s also satisfying to finish something in a shorter amount of time. Novel writing has daily rewards on the page, but feels like it is never actually finished, even after completing drafts. Short story writing forces me to hit the story in the sweetest spot.

My revision motto lately: “Does this (character/description/plot beat, etc)  serve the heart of the story?”

This mindset really comes out of short story writing, where every word is carefully counted.     

KMWR: What is your ideal writing session, and what do you like to have nearby as you write?

TR: I try to write 1000 words a day, whether it be revision plans, outlining, or in the manuscript. I’ve found that daily discipline is annoyingly effective for me. I developed this moon system for my writing:

I get to fill in a moon for every thousand words I write. It pushes me to reach my daily goal because I get a hit of lovely dopamine when I crosshatch a new moon as I track my progress on a big project. So much of writing is immaterial labor on a laptop, so having something material and quantifiable proves to my hunter-gatherer brain that I did, in fact, do work that day.

I write curled up like a cozy goblin on the couch, my critters beside me, sweet tea flowing, and headphones surgically attached to my ears. I keep my moon parchment in view at all times, and, of course, my hundreds of emotional support research tabs open.

KMWR: What have you been reading recently and what would you recommend?

TR: For lush, gothic, weird girl fiction, my favorites of the year were The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister, House of Cotton by Monica Brashears, and Smothermoss by Alisa Alering. I just started Rose Keating’s weird lit body horror short story collection Oddbody and I’m completely entranced.

KMWR: Can you talk more about what you're working on now?

TR: I have been in the query trenches for six months with two novels. After twenty-two full manuscript requests and multiple offers, I just signed with an agent, Sam Edenborough of Greyhound Literary. First thing on my worklist is revising one of the novels for submission. SWALLERJAW is a Frankenstein-esque Folk Horror set in the Florida swamps. Kinda bonkers, kinda vile, and very tender.

I’ll continue writing short stories when I need to come up for air!

♤♡
♧♢

Tif Robinette was raised in a fundamentalist sect in West Virginia, homeschooled along with her eight younger siblings, and now lives with her partner and critters in an off-grid tiny home she built in the mountains of northern California. 

Tif spent her twenties in NYC working in blue-chip art galleries by day and performing in experimental art warehouse shows by night. Out of her art practice, she began filmmaking, which led to an MFA in Screenwriting. But when scripts failed to satisfy her literary yearnings, she wrote her first novel, JACKALOPE, a contemporary folk horror homage to Jane Eyre. Her second novel, SWALLERJAW, is a Frankenstein-esque folk horror set in the Florida swamps. When she is drowning in novel writing, she comes up for air to write short stories.

Her work has been published in various places, including The Southeast Review, Phile Magazine, Gingerzine, Black Hare Press and Feign. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2025). She is represented by Sam Edenborough at Greyhound Literary. 

Every week, she trades critiques in a fantastic writing group, whose keen eyeballs and insightful notes spur her to keep crafting age-old stories in fresh ways.

Read “Additional Elegancies for Additional Cost” here.