Kate Kastelberg
Bio
-cottage-core meets adventure
-revels in nature, mystery and the fantastical
-avoids baleful gaze of various eldritch terrors
-your Village Witch before it was cool
-under command of cats and owls
-let’s take a Time Machine back to the 90s
Achievements (8)
Stories (45)
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What Napoleon Would Have Wanted
It was December 2015. It was to be the winter for the trip of a lifetime. My wanderlust began at a young age. With my first visit to South Africa at the fourteen, the spark was ignited and only grew with age. Now in my mid-thirties, I have traveled to 17 countries and over 20 states. To describe this trip, I first need to explain how I arrived there. Having studied French most of my life, studying abroad in Tours, France in high school and in Angers, France in college, you could say that my Francophilia only ripened deeper with age, like a fine Beaujolais. After college, I took it a step further and taught English abroad in French Guiana (in South America). That year, despite many hardships, was one of the best of my life. In Kourou, French Guiana I was known as “l’américaine” (the American woman), recognized pedaling around town on my bike and to many, the first and only American they had met. During that seminal time, I fostered a sense of community around me that I had heretofore not experienced. I made friends with other teaching assistants from around the world, friends from my tango class and friends from the theatre class at the French foreign legion.
By Kate Kastelberg 2 years ago in Wander
With You I Melt
The sun breached the clouds early that morning. Yesterday bore wild flurries, uncharacteristic of March. Thick, wet flakes blanketed the ground and stole silence deep into compacted earth, a whole foot deep. The usually sleepy street rang with the cries of children, squealing with delight as they sledded down the one hill. The Creator, not possessing a sled, had worked with singular concentration gracing her young brow, working the snow into spheres.
By Kate Kastelberg 2 years ago in Fiction
The Case of the Missing White Case
To the One Who Lost Me, I am losing power. My insides are empty. I am cold. I cannot call to you, though the trace of your DNA still lines my grooves. Gummy, grimy, dirty against the smooth white. Opaque white, like the delicate curves and sinew of your ears—the thicker cartilage where the light doesn’t shine through—not the thin, translucent flesh that bore pink, pearlescent veins to their scalloped edge like squiggled lines from a cipher to crack. Like spindly seismic cracks in sidewalks lifted by giant oak roots beneath.
By Kate Kastelberg 2 years ago in Fiction
Who Stole the Selkie's Coat?
Take out your monocle and don your tweed, for I have something you must read. Gentle reader, beware, for this is a tale of epic twists and turns. It exists perhaps between the ethereal and the real. You may not believe it. I beseech you, though, to suspend disbelief (and judgment) until the tale is done. If you grant me this, as your humble narrator, I will mayhaps let you choose what ending befits you and the worldly sensibilities you have, no doubt, gathered from your experiences heretofore, before having chanced upon this tale...
By Kate Kastelberg 2 years ago in Criminal
