My Novella "The Cage"--Now Available at PodCastle as a Podcast

PodCastle has just posted the podcast reading of my novella "The Cage," originally published in City of Saints and Madmen and reprinted in at least one year's best. The story can also be found in The Weird.I first had the idea for "The Cage" at a bar mitzvah party. I saw a strange-looking cage wedged high up in a corner of a ledge in the banquet area. It didn't seem to fit. I worried that detail in my mind for quite awhile, not sure what it meant. Then one day we were traveling back from some event on the Florida coast and we passed by the University of Tampa, which is housed in part in an old former hotel. It was after hours, and we walked around that place, which was eerie and somewhat like The Shining hotel in both the decor and the way the silence was watchful. And behind glass, in an exhibit: another cage. At which point, something was sparked in my imagination and I suddenly had the core of the idea for the story.