Nat Cassidy

@natcassidy.bsky.social

6474 Followers 1167 Following

USA Today bestselling horror noveler (MARY; NESTLINGS; REST STOP; WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME). TV actor. Musician. Out now: I KNOW A PLACE, May 5, 2026, Shortwave Books. (he/him)

The talk-to-me hand from TALK TO ME, which lets you talk to the dead.
From Jared Cohen’s ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENTS: “some of [Silly Goose Coolidge’s] favorite pranks involved ‘ringing the White House doorbell and then hiding behind the curtains, or pressing the buzzer to announce his impending arrival at the White House, only to head out the door for a stroll as staffers scurried around to prepare for him.’”
Epigraphs from a book: PART THREE DRY HEAT A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, the light which, showing the way, forbids it. —Kate Chopin, The Awakening Even before the now-infamous Easter Massacre, the town knew murder and bloodshed. If I were the type of man who believed in such nonsense, I’d think the place was haunted. —Special Agent Peter Arliss, In the Dark with the Devil: One Heroic FBI Agent's Ground Zero Account of the Arroyo Easter Massacre
"A TERRIFYING JOY... DRIPPING WITH UNRELENTING DREAD, IMMERSIVE FEAR, AND EXISTENTIAL TERROR... A SINGULAR VOICE, CASSIDY DOESN'T JUST KNOW A PLACE, HE HAS PLANTED A FLAG THERE, CEMENTING HIS STATUS WITH A COLLECTION THAT FEELS LIKE A CONVERSATION ABOUT HORROR (BOTH THE FEELING AND THE GENRE) BETWEEN AUTHOR AND READERS." LIBRARY JOURNAL STARRED REVIEW
A bumper sticker that reads, “Don’t mind me, i’ve been drinking scotch whiskey all night and plan on DYING BEHIND THE WHEEL.”
Three seashells. What, you don’t know how to use them?!
The dedication page for Nat Cassidy’s upcoming collection, I KNOW A PLACE (publishing 5.5.26 wherever books are sold): “Short stories are keys and this book is for the locksmiths. For Richard Matheson, Kelly Link, Ray Bradbury, Carmen Maria Machado, Robert Bloch, John Langan, Charles Beaumont, Nathan Ballingrud, Stephen King, Brian Evenson, Peter Straub, Hailey Piper, Mariana Enriquez, Clive Barker, Eric LaRocca, Joe Hill, Stephen Graham Jones, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, Clay McLeod Chapman, Rachel Harrison, Tananarive Due, T.E.D. Klein, R.L. Stine, Nadia Bulkin, Junji Ito, Paula D. Ashe, Joyce Carol Oates, Manly Wade Wellman, Anton Chekhov, Lisa Tuttle, Michael Wehunt, Angela Carter, Laird Barron, RJ Joseph, Karl Edward Wagner, Philip Fracassi, Michael Shea, Tyler Jones, Denis Johnson, Alvin Schwartz, Thomas Ligotti, John Hornor Jacobs, Anthony Boucher, Ananda Lima, Jon Padgett, Robert Westall, Jeremy Robert Johnson, Raymond van Over, Daphne Du Maurier, Amy Hempel, and Harlan Ellison. Just to name a few. It's also for you, if you'll come with me. Let's open some doors together...”
That morning, I got another call, this time from the owner of her nursing home. She'd had another sharp decline overnight. He didn't think she had much time left. Quite frankly, he didn't know how she made it through the night. My brother and I quickly got on a video call with her. She was barely more than a skeleton at this point. The hair she always took so much pride in-which we constantly begged her to spend less money on, and which she constantly, stubbornly, requested we get over it—had been buzzed away. Her eyes were tiny, dull marbles in deep, drowning sockets. She hadn't really been speaking for months at this point, but when she heard our voices she made some weak vocalizations. We stayed on with her for about an hour, telling her it was okay, that everyone was okay, and then she decided to finally let go with us on the line.
My mom liked to trace her map points with her finger. She didn't have much, but she had her stories. And one thing I've learned about stories is they teach us about ourselves as we tell them. They're double-blessed, as Portia's mercy. Every time she told us one of her classics, my mom got to know who she was. Maybe that knowledge didn't always last long, before the insecurities of the world, of being a single mother trying to raise two sons on a part-time income while fighting a degenerative disease, crept back in again and the map got fuzzy. But for those moments she knew. And I'm all too aware there's not a lot of justice in this world but I hope there's just enough of it that she got to feel as proud as she deserved to feel every time we rolled our eyes at a familiar tale. ***
ROBYN GAE LACHER CASSIDY MARGOLIS June 2, 1952 - January 19, 2021 Someone held a knife to her throat and she said fuck you. It was a story we heard dozens of times growing up. The kind of story whose impact is blunted both by familiarity and the context in which it's told. Obviously, we knew she survived the ordeal, so, after the second or third telling, yeah, yeah, mom, this is the story where you were walking in Central Park and someone came up behind you, held a knife to your throat, demanded your purse, and you said fuck you. No big whoop. ***
Nat Cassidy’s upcoming short story collection, I KNOW A PLACE, is now available for request on NetGalley!