Hey Thrillers - did you know that after the invention of the printing press, two publications really spread like wildfire?
One was the Bible... of course, and the other, inspired by it, was the Malleus Maleficarum, otherwise known as the "Hammer of Witches."
The Malleus was widely interpreted to say that women who exercised bodily and sexual autonomy, developed skills, practiced medicine and healing, attained and shared knowledge, owned property, or merely spoke their minds were probably in pact with demons. They were called witches and, as such, must be incarcerated, tortured, burned, and stripped of their land and possessions. Good times!
Oh, those nasty olden days... thankfully, centuries later, we've grown out of having such repressive ideas about women spreading on shiny new platforms, radicalizing small-minded men. Oh, wait...
Mother Line, the newest story from my multi-award winning, twice Ambie-nominated audio drama Ominous Thrill, dramatizes that connection without flinching.
It threads supernatural folk horror through a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller that takes the present moment seriously by refusing to cloak its monster in metaphor.
STORY:
When Brooklyn and Zane become the target of a radicalized federal agent, the night of terror drives Brooklyn to finally embrace the ancestral power she has always kept at arm's length — her Mother Line.
Part ONE of FOUR OUT NOW
https://pod.link/1726990321?view=episodes&sortEp=newest
Ep 2 release: June 18
Ep 3 release: July 2
Ep 4 release: July 16
I wrote this story over several months in 2025 and recorded it, coincidentally, in mid-January 2026, right in the middle of the horrors playing out on the streets of Minneapolis.
This wasn't some grand feat of prediction; it was simply paying attention to the present moment and extrapolating where I thought things were going. The true horror for me was watching how quickly real events were outpacing the worst fictions I could imagine.
As with most Ominous Thrill stories, this is not for everyone, so please heed the content warnings: gun violence; sexual harassment and coercion; domestic abuse including bodily violation; misogynistic hate speech; themes of political authoritarianism and gender-based state violence drawn directly from current events.
Please take care of yourself.
Mother Line is a prestige-level audio drama with amazing performances and stunning sound production that dares to look the present moment in the face... hopefully in a way listeners will find artful, infuriating and, in the end, a little bit hopeful.
Part one of four is out now, and you can hear the entire feature-length story on Patreon and as an Apple subscriber.