Mary Robinette Kowal’s flash fiction story “Prayer at Dark River” appears in the Fall  2009 fiction issue of Innsmouth Free Press.

Mary is the 2008 recipient of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her short fiction appears in Strange Horizons, Cosmos and Asimov’s. Mary, a professional puppeteer and voice actor, lives in Portland, OR with her husband Rob and eight manual typewriters. Tor is publishing her debut novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, in 2010. Visit www.maryrobinettekowal.com.

IFP: How did you become interested in writing speculative stories?
MRK: I love that anything is possible and that, within all that possibility, speculative fiction allows us to step to the side of the real world and view it from a different angle. It is the intersection of wonder and understanding.

IFP: What was the inspiration for your story?

MRK: I lived in Iceland for a year and a half. There’s a ghost museum there with dioramas of each of the stories. “The Deacon of Dark River”, which this is based on, is one of the most famous. As horrible as it must have been for Gudrun, I couldn’t help but wonder how it must have been for the priest who had to make the decision to give up on God and turn to older, darker forces. When I realized that Professor Webb, from “The Call of Cthulhu”, had actually been to Iceland, it seemed a natural pairing.

IFP: If you were a Cthulhu Mythos monster or character, who would you be and why?

MRK: Perhaps Nyarlathotep? Lovecraft described him as an itinerant showman and, with his manipulative ways, that might be as close as I can get to my performing lifestyle.

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