Dark Stories.
Weird Ideas.
Beautifully Human.
My stories span literary fiction, science fiction, horror, thriller, and fantasy, and I publish new ones regularly on Substack and Medium.
Five genres, one voice worth following
Published in Brittle Paper, Reedsy, and more
Building a writers’ community since 2018
Every story starts as something I can’t stop thinking about.
Published In
Brittle Paper
Reedsy Prompts
Philly Chapbook Review
The Kraken Lore
About me
Somtoo Celestine Ezioha
I write the stories that wake me up at 3 a.m. and won’t let me fall back asleep.
Literary fiction that turns strange. Horror that starts too close to home. Thrillers with a soft spot for grief. Fantasy stitched from the corners of Nigerian folklore nobody warned you about.
Since 2018, I’ve run ZenPens for writers still finding their nerve, and in 2024, co-founded Naija Storyscapes, where stories are illustrated and narrated rather than just read.
I write from Awka, Nigeria, usually later than I should be awake.
Latest Stories
A Language of Tastes and Flavours
I had the banga stew on fire before morning. Palm fruit boiled soft, pounded, boiled again until the thick oil rose across the pot, giving me a deep orange at the edges. I stirred it every so often so it wouldn’t stick to the bottom, adjusted the pepper, and left the snails for last so the heat wouldn’t toughen them.
…
NEPA Boy
Azuka gripped the pencil too hard and made himself ease off before it left a dent in the wood.
His heart was beating fast. It always did on exam mornings. He’d stopped trying to talk it down years ago.
Through the windows, cars leaned on their horns somewhere in the go-slow outside. Inside, the ceiling fan wobbled on
…
Preydator
The campus at this hour belongs to me.
Students know a different campus. Lecture halls, timetables, which hostel has light past midnight. What I know is the darkness. Two streetlights behind the Management Faculty have been dead since the February power outage. The cameras along the Law Faculty road run off a backup
…