My Work

I write speculative fiction, fantasy, satire, and essays about the space between systems, genres, and who we are and whom we believe we can become.

This page holds selected work from my Substack, including serialized fiction, longer essays, and ongoing projects. Some pieces stand alone. Others are released in episodes and build over time.

If you want everything as it happens, new installments in your inbox, notes on the process, and work that is still unfolding, Substack is where that lives. Start with the featured pieces below, or subscribe and follow along.

All Posts

The Karens of Middle Management — Episode 4: Flying Monkeys from Accounting

Freddie had meant to hold it in. He had tried. God, how he’d tried. But with his stomach growing louder with each passing floor—and the damn floors crawling upward at a cruel, glacial pace—hope began to slip. Something was wrong. Was the elevator broken? Had this building finally decided to kill him? And just when he thought he might make it— Bing! The doors slid open. Diane gave Freddie one last look that said, Godspeed! cut with pity and relief that it wasn’t her trapped in

Kelly Manning-Baraban

Jan 293 min read

The Karens of Middle Management — Episode 3: An Entrepreneurial Witch

Freddie Beyond the Veil was finishing lunch at the roadside tavern—blackened Krans meat and delicious Bubosnic soup—when his stomach began imitating the mating calls of Sea-Worms. A sharp, wrong heat twisted low in his gut. He heard it even above the collective murmur of patrons clinking their forks and muttering in low, grisly voices. The tavern was dim, lit only by hundreds of enchanted mirrors lining the walls, each with a burning candle reflected at its center. Real candl

Kelly Manning-Baraban

Jan 295 min read

The Karens of Middle Management — Episode 2: The Sandwich

Two hours later, both Freddies were on the move, one going to a tavern outside the mountains of Ida, built of dragon scales and owned by an old witch who mostly didn’t poison her customers. At the same time, the other hurried off to a no-name office building, built at a time when office buildings were attempting to be as nondescript as possible, as if to melt into the background, which was unfortunate, because the background happened to be ugly concrete and white-yellow plast

Kelly Manning-Baraban

Jan 294 min read

The Karens of Middle Management — Episode 1: Freddie Beyond the Veil

Freddie was waiting in line for a double espresso when a man with his face rode through a death forest, sword in hand. The kingdom of Ophania was green, lush, and elusive. The only way one could reach Ophania was if they already knew it existed, which most people in our dimension did not. It existed between worlds, where this one started, and another built up, a shade greener and slightly more acidic. So when our Freddie was standing in line at the coffee shop waiting for his

Kelly Manning-Baraban

Jan 293 min read