Interview: Kari Kilgore on Fantastic Shorts
Kari Kilgore writes the kind of fantasy where the world looks ordinary until it doesn’t—the tree that’s not quite right, the song that’s delightfully off, the bookstore that turns out to have opinions. Fantastic Shorts gathers sixteen of these across every corner of her imagination, from her native Appalachian mountains to another planet and back.
It’s one of fifteen exclusive collections in the 2026 Fantasy Bundle of Bundles, curated by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Kari was generous enough to talk with us about the strange undercurrents she can’t stop chasing, the little girl who runs the writing machine in her head, and the magical bookstore that started as a one-line workshop prompt.
The Interview
Your collection includes sixteen stories that jump from Allsentia to Appalachia to Atlanta—that’s a lot of ground under one roof! What ties them all together?
One thing I’ve learned is no matter where I live, where I travel, or what I read or watch, I’m often drawn to the strange undercurrents. The tree or stream or building that’s not quite right. The train or book or song that’s delightfully off somehow. And most of all, the people who embrace or embody the weirdness around us and inside us.
That’s the kind of characters and settings and situations I’m most often drawn to in fiction. Things that may seem fairly mainstream on the surface, but there’s a whole lot more going on underneath. Discovering what that is drives my story consumption and my storytelling.
All of those locations and everywhere else in these collections have that oddness in common.
Your wanderlust takes you all over the world, but you always come home to the Virginia mountains. When you write the fantastic, how does that Appalachian ground find its way into the work—the texture, the folklore, the way a place feels?
The way the ancient, beautiful Appalachian Mountains all around us still hide a whole lot of secrets is part of it! There’s a lot of undeveloped, wild terrain, for one thing. Plenty of room to get lost and discover things that maybe you’re not supposed to know about. I’m constantly finding or seeing or hearing odd things right around our house in the woods. So I naturally look for that kind of shadowy, strange place no matter where I am, or where the story is set. That’s true for lighthearted stories as much as for the darker ones.
That aspect finds its way into stories in multiple genres. One of my favorite examples is The Becalmed, which at its core is set in Appalachia on another planet.
But even more than that, it’s the attitude of most local folks. Sure, we know about that eerie noise you hear from one specific spot on the mountain, or the bizarre lights you see up there on certain dates. The kinds of events that might spook someone else, or make them think they just have to investigate. That’s not necessarily a good idea!
Locals in general tend to say “Yeah, that happens,” and go on about their lives. We respect the mountains, and we accept how things aren’t necessarily as they seem. In a lot of my fantasy stories, people might eventually get to that kind of acceptance.
There’s a magical bookstore in one of your stories! Is it based on a real bookstore?
Sadly it’s not! The Odds and Endings Bookstore got its start from a story prompt in a writing workshop years ago that was quite simple. Write a story with a bookstore.
I had no clue I’d end up with the short story Odds and Endings, set in fictional Lightning Gap, Virginia, a town full of peculiar magic. I also never would have guessed I’d end up with a bunch of Lightning Gap stories, and that the town itself would be part of a much larger fictional Appalachia that’s all connected. Every one of those stories has surprised and delighted me, and I’m always ready to write more.
The town and the bookstore are very much their own characters with influence in the stories, which pleases me to no end.
The promise of your collections is that a reader should “always expect the strange.” What do you enjoy about keeping a reader a little off balance, never quite sure how far a story is going to lean?
I rarely have any idea what’s going to happen next as I write, since the little girl who runs the writing machine in my head is completely in charge. The entire plot is a mystery to me before I get started. But I have to admit there are moments when something I truly didn’t expect pops up, and I end up giggling to myself. Partly because I adore that part of writing. And sometimes because I can’t wait to see if readers love the shift as much as I do.
I’d also say the off-balance aspect naturally comes from my tendency to write the story first, then figure out the genre later on. I often don’t know where it’s going to land, so I get to discover things myself. I hope that curiosity and surprise come through to readers, even in a fantasy-themed collection.
What do you love about writing—and reading—science fantasy?
I love that sensation of being unmoored from reality. Knowing that at some point, things are going to move into events that can’t—or at least normally don’t—happen in real life.
We get a solid dose of the ordinary world just about every single day. I say just about because we’ve all experienced days that don’t seem real for one reason or another. But in any kind of fantasy, whether it’s set in a fantasy world, right around the corner, or somewhere in between, we know going in that we’ll get that break from the everyday.
The great thing is that happens whether I’m reading, writing, watching something, or taking in another form of storytelling from art to music or even some video games. No matter what subgenre of fantasy we’re getting immersed in, we get to escape the real world in some way.
What are you working on now—and what’s fun or exciting about it?
Right now I’m putting together my next Kickstarter for a fancy omnibus edition of fantasy romantic suspense stories called Voices Through Time. The best part is it’s inspiring me to write more stories in that world, which will in turn be part of the Kickstarter. It’s one of those rare and wonderful times when the publishing business side actually feeds the creative side rather than the other way around.
Ten years ago, I wrote the first Voices Through Time book, Songs in the Mountain. Beth meets an ornery ghost in one of my earliest fictional Appalachia towns, which leads her directly into meeting Mark. The two of them solve a mystery together, with help from several ghosts. I loved that world and those characters so much that I quickly wrote two more books, then a bunch of short stories.
Voices Through Time collects them all for the first time, along with images of the antique postcards that inspired the tales and notes about how they shaped the stories. Besides four books, I’ll be offering new antique postcards, wall calendars, and jigsaw puzzles. I’m having a delightful time putting it all together.
Check out Kickstarter.com/Projects/KariKilgore/Voices-Through-Time for the October launch as part of Witchstarter!
About the Author
Endlessly creative author Kari Kilgore’s wanderlust and imagination lead her all over the world on grand adventures. Her heart and family bring her home to her native Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. From that solid base and with the help of the ever-changing lens of her imagination, she brings those adventures to life in fiction. Kari writes fantasy, romance, science fiction, mystery, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives with her husband and fellow author Jason A. Adams, various house critters, and nearby wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about.
Find Kari Kilgore
Get the bundle
Fantastic Shorts is part of the 2026 Fantasy Bundle of Bundles, fifteen exclusive collections curated by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Pay what you want, and you can choose to send a share of your purchase to World Central Kitchen. Live through August 27, 2026 at storybundle.com/fantasy.