Welcome to the new charlieforet.com

New site, same stories

Welcome, and thanks for finding your way here.

If you visited before, this place looks and runs a little differently. The site used to live on WordPress. Now it's self-hosted, which is a fancy way of saying I own the whole thing end to end and can build it the way I actually want.

For you, that means pages load faster, nothing's buried under plugins and pop-ups, and everything I make lives in one spot: the books, the free short fiction, the blog, and the podcast.

Poke around. It's all here.

A couple of things worth knowing

It's faster and cleaner now. No WordPress overhead, no clutter between you and the words. Just the stories, laid out so you can find what you came for and start reading.

The free stuff is front and center. I write a lot that never costs a dime: short stories, serials, and dispatches from the worlds I'm building. You don't need an account to read any of it. Start wherever you like.

Start with a free story: The Witch's Brew

If you want a taste of how I write, read this one first. It's free, and it takes about half an hour.

Four months out of college and drowning in his own wasted potential, Ethan Reed has given up on Halloween. Then he finds a shop that wasn't there yesterday, wedged between a vape store and a dead Blockbuster, its door ajar and its candlelight warm.

Inside waits Vesper, who knows his name, his fears, and exactly what he's afraid to want. Her potions taste of blackberries and smoke. She offers him a choice, and gives him one night to make it.

It's a Halloween fable about desire and the doors we don't walk through, told in a single unforgettable night. If you like the seductive dread of Mexican Gothic or the enchanted romance of Practical Magic, this is for you.

Read The Witch's Brew, free

Stick around

New stories, new-release news, and the occasional look behind the curtain land in the newsletter. It's free, and I don't spam.

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Glad you're here.

Charlie