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Out of Body: Stories
Not yet published
Expected 22 Sep 26A wildly inventive collection of interconnected speculative stories—spanning the multiverse, demonic attachment, and life after death—from an electrifying new voice in fiction.
An aimless ghost haunts his ex-girlfriend for evidence that she’s actually upset about his death.
A group of teens discovers a machine that purports to predict the best day of its users’ lives.
A young woman is horrified to discover that an aggressive stranger she met on a night of bar-hopping now manifests in every photo that is taken of her.
A drunken posse descends into the woods in search of clowns that have been terrorizing their small town.
Chris Vanjonack’s fiction is haunted not only by specters of death, but by the elusive questions of life, and above all, the wonder and horror of the infinite. Uncanny, surreal, and infectiously clever, the stories in this linked collection contain horrors great and small, fueled as much by the fantastic as by longing, dread, and all-too-human frailties.
Morbidly funny and brilliantly observed, Out of Body is an atmospheric, dead original feast for the senses.
An aimless ghost haunts his ex-girlfriend for evidence that she’s actually upset about his death.
A group of teens discovers a machine that purports to predict the best day of its users’ lives.
A young woman is horrified to discover that an aggressive stranger she met on a night of bar-hopping now manifests in every photo that is taken of her.
A drunken posse descends into the woods in search of clowns that have been terrorizing their small town.
Chris Vanjonack’s fiction is haunted not only by specters of death, but by the elusive questions of life, and above all, the wonder and horror of the infinite. Uncanny, surreal, and infectiously clever, the stories in this linked collection contain horrors great and small, fueled as much by the fantastic as by longing, dread, and all-too-human frailties.
Morbidly funny and brilliantly observed, Out of Body is an atmospheric, dead original feast for the senses.
Kindle Edition
Expected publication September 22, 2026
4 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Chris Vanjonack
1 book2 followersChris Vanjonack is a writer and educator from Denver, Colorado. A recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, his fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in One Story, Book of the Month Club's Volume 0, Barrelhouse, Electric Literature, Ninth Letter, DIAGRAM, CRAFT Literary, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and teaches creative writing at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop and at the Denver School of the Arts.
His debut short story collection, Out of Body, is forthcoming from William Morrow in September 2026.
His debut short story collection, Out of Body, is forthcoming from William Morrow in September 2026.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 14, 2026
This one was a wild ride! This is a collection of 10 interconnected horror stories, the last of which, “Heaven Is Fine For Girls Who Miss Their Mothers”. This one is the longest and we get tie ins with previous characters. The author does a great job giving a ton variety within these stories. I was thoroughly engaged throughout, but I couldn’t ever guess what would happen next. I took my time with these stories, reading about one a day. This is a very introspective book. If you are a fan of horror or sci-fi, or just love a complicated, bizarre universe, I think this book is for you!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I went into this collection with excitement, because I love a collection of science fiction stories that are all about horrible, genius inventions and how they ruin people's lives. I will suspend my disbelief for the sake of a really well done story.
The first story started off strong--oh, a kid has invented some Terrible Things! So automatically, I was like, so the rest of this story is going to be about those Terrible Things, I can't wait!
Well, ... it wasn't, really. The Terrible Inventions make an appearance, but there's less of them than I expected. The rest of the stories are mostly about, um, really horrible relationships, and maybe Denver?
Maybe I was not the target audience for this book, specifically because I live in Denver and I also spent many years living in Fort Collins. (I will admit I got a spike of shock when I read about the characters going to Pour House in Old Town and then turning onto College Avenue-- imagine me shouting to no one, "OMG my home town? My old stomping grounds?") The problem was that the name drops happened constantly, a few times every story. The author takes a lot of time to illustrate how people went to CSU, how they are now on the corner of Speer and Colfax, how they are at this one really specific bar in downtown Denver, how they're looking at Denver Weather, how they went to the Denver Museum of Art.... you get my point.
Maybe if I weren't from Denver, I would read through all this extra detail and not really care. But because I have spent a significant portion of my life in Colorado, it really took me away from the ability to get lost in the magic of the Terrible Inventions and all the philosophical ways they interplay with the characters' lives. There was so much focus on grounding each story in the Real World that that the element of magic was just lost on me. I am a huge sucker for magical realism intertwined with science fiction, and something here was lost for me.
Coming to my thoughts on the philosophical intertwinement of science fiction and lofty ideas? I found it to be increasingly more grueling to get through each story. There are so many people in awful, abusive relationships, or neglectful relationships, or fizzled ones, or people just plain cheating on each other (I believe this happens in at least two stories). At least two of the stories' premises are entirely just based on loser men who can't get over their manic pixie dream girls. I mean, not to say that unrequited love can't be a topic of a story, but it didn't feel like it brought anything new to the table.
Finally, my last and greatest disappointment was this: almost all the stories are part of one whole overarching narrative! My favorite author's trick, to have short stories that seem separate but actually have glimpses of characters we've seen before, or characters we will see later! New perspectives come to light! More angles of the timeline!
The final story was meant to be the culmination of this, all the stories drawn into one. It's also, by far, the longest. I STRUGGLED my way through this one. It is We have seen this character before, and I was thinking, oh, this is going to be so cyclical and magical!
Girl no. The author slips from third person into second person and then spends so much time dragging their way through . I don't care about , omg, there are too many. The prose really takes off and by that I mean it rambles. I felt like I, too, was being . So if that was the intention of this story, then fine, it worked.
Unfortunately, It was not enjoyable whatsoever and I did not close the book satisfied with any sort of theme or meaning that was tied in through the . I got to the point where the woman being tumbled through all of this seems to be reflecting on EVERY SINGLE THING that ever happened or could have happened, that I felt that I was stuck in the fabled torment nexus
Oh, PS, my random nitpick: the story where . I did feel the theme of this story, as in the guy But at the same time it was just so very offputting to me and seemed so divorced from the rest of the science fiction concept of the book. Like huh?
By the end of the story, all I could really conclude is, I feel like every MC felt slightly the same-ish, maybe a reflection of the author themselves... and because of that, I kind of felt like I was watching the author's thoughts right as they graduated from college and were missing all the clubbing and pub crawls and hookups.
However, I really did enjoy the premise of the science fiction inventions, and I also liked the first story a lot (what IF the best day of your life was already over and you knew that for a fact????) so for that I round up from 2.5 to 3 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
The first story started off strong--oh, a kid has invented some Terrible Things! So automatically, I was like, so the rest of this story is going to be about those Terrible Things, I can't wait!
Well, ... it wasn't, really. The Terrible Inventions make an appearance, but there's less of them than I expected. The rest of the stories are mostly about, um, really horrible relationships, and maybe Denver?
Maybe I was not the target audience for this book, specifically because I live in Denver and I also spent many years living in Fort Collins. (I will admit I got a spike of shock when I read about the characters going to Pour House in Old Town and then turning onto College Avenue-- imagine me shouting to no one, "OMG my home town? My old stomping grounds?") The problem was that the name drops happened constantly, a few times every story. The author takes a lot of time to illustrate how people went to CSU, how they are now on the corner of Speer and Colfax, how they are at this one really specific bar in downtown Denver, how they're looking at Denver Weather, how they went to the Denver Museum of Art.... you get my point.
Maybe if I weren't from Denver, I would read through all this extra detail and not really care. But because I have spent a significant portion of my life in Colorado, it really took me away from the ability to get lost in the magic of the Terrible Inventions and all the philosophical ways they interplay with the characters' lives. There was so much focus on grounding each story in the Real World that that the element of magic was just lost on me. I am a huge sucker for magical realism intertwined with science fiction, and something here was lost for me.
Coming to my thoughts on the philosophical intertwinement of science fiction and lofty ideas? I found it to be increasingly more grueling to get through each story. There are so many people in awful, abusive relationships, or neglectful relationships, or fizzled ones, or people just plain cheating on each other (I believe this happens in at least two stories). At least two of the stories' premises are entirely just based on loser men who can't get over their manic pixie dream girls. I mean, not to say that unrequited love can't be a topic of a story, but it didn't feel like it brought anything new to the table.
Finally, my last and greatest disappointment was this: almost all the stories are part of one whole overarching narrative! My favorite author's trick, to have short stories that seem separate but actually have glimpses of characters we've seen before, or characters we will see later! New perspectives come to light! More angles of the timeline!
The final story was meant to be the culmination of this, all the stories drawn into one. It's also, by far, the longest. I STRUGGLED my way through this one. It is We have seen this character before, and I was thinking, oh, this is going to be so cyclical and magical!
Girl no. The author slips from third person into second person and then spends so much time dragging their way through . I don't care about , omg, there are too many. The prose really takes off and by that I mean it rambles. I felt like I, too, was being . So if that was the intention of this story, then fine, it worked.
Unfortunately, It was not enjoyable whatsoever and I did not close the book satisfied with any sort of theme or meaning that was tied in through the . I got to the point where the woman being tumbled through all of this seems to be reflecting on EVERY SINGLE THING that ever happened or could have happened, that I felt that I was stuck in the fabled torment nexus
Oh, PS, my random nitpick: the story where . I did feel the theme of this story, as in the guy But at the same time it was just so very offputting to me and seemed so divorced from the rest of the science fiction concept of the book. Like huh?
By the end of the story, all I could really conclude is, I feel like every MC felt slightly the same-ish, maybe a reflection of the author themselves... and because of that, I kind of felt like I was watching the author's thoughts right as they graduated from college and were missing all the clubbing and pub crawls and hookups.
However, I really did enjoy the premise of the science fiction inventions, and I also liked the first story a lot (what IF the best day of your life was already over and you knew that for a fact????) so for that I round up from 2.5 to 3 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
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March 15, 2026⭐️⭐️⭐️
It is always difficult to rate a collection of stories, so I am averaging in my score. My favorites in this book were Invent Everything and Phases. There were some very cool concepts in this collection: a a haunting from the perspective of the ghost, a group of girls who learn the date of best day of their lives and all the consequences that come with this knowledge, a man who wants to time travel to assume the identity of his past self. These are the beginnings of fantastic Sci-Fi storylines. Sadly, there is a consistent lack of resolution that feels unsatisfying, almost as if these were ideas not fully fleshed out or nobody was sure where to go once the concepts were established. I also struggled to maintain attention through numerous meandering parts in each story, and I don't know that I totally grok the final story in the book, which was supposed to bring everything together. It could be that I just don't like to work this hard when I am reading for fun (in other words, I may be the problem here).
There were elements of the writing style that reminded me of Yoko Ogawa, so if you are a fan of her horror writing style, this might be a good fit for you.
Thank you to NetGalley, Chris Vanjonack, and William Morrow for sharing an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.
It is always difficult to rate a collection of stories, so I am averaging in my score. My favorites in this book were Invent Everything and Phases. There were some very cool concepts in this collection: a a haunting from the perspective of the ghost, a group of girls who learn the date of best day of their lives and all the consequences that come with this knowledge, a man who wants to time travel to assume the identity of his past self. These are the beginnings of fantastic Sci-Fi storylines. Sadly, there is a consistent lack of resolution that feels unsatisfying, almost as if these were ideas not fully fleshed out or nobody was sure where to go once the concepts were established. I also struggled to maintain attention through numerous meandering parts in each story, and I don't know that I totally grok the final story in the book, which was supposed to bring everything together. It could be that I just don't like to work this hard when I am reading for fun (in other words, I may be the problem here).
There were elements of the writing style that reminded me of Yoko Ogawa, so if you are a fan of her horror writing style, this might be a good fit for you.
Thank you to NetGalley, Chris Vanjonack, and William Morrow for sharing an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Out of Body is a fun, existential collection of weird little stories. Like with any short story collection some are stronger than others, but overall Out of Body is an excellent showing. They're thought provoking and relatable. Chris Vanjonack captures the at time daunting question of "what if..." and the infinite possibilities of life (and death!) in a unique and memorable way.
I would love to see what Vanjonack could do with a novel and will definitely be looking out for what comes next.
I would love to see what Vanjonack could do with a novel and will definitely be looking out for what comes next.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews