the worst pokémon
Cory Skerry | inkshark | he/him/his
- illustrator, writer, & editor
- rampantly queer
- enjoy pranks
- like animals better than people, even you, sorry
- ferociously feminist & sex-positive, not worried about ruining holiday dinners over it
- never been drunk
- nonetheless, i’ve peeled up roadkill and put it into my mouth, for reasons
- intentionally don’t capitalize my mid-sentence pronouns; it’s an ugly conceit of the English language & i refuse to participate
I live in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest U.S., where i write impossible things and paint what i shouldn’t. When my current meatshell begins to decay, i’d like science to put my brain into a giant killer octopus body, with which i promise to be very responsible and not even slightly shipwrecky. Pinky swear.
No one has ever accused me of looking professional or even hygienic. Also pictured: the love of my life, who is driving, because he is also the chauffeur of my life
writing
primarily: YA | speculative fiction | horror | romance?!
agent: Cameron McClure at DMLA
I finished my first novel when i was 12 (i won’t say it was good). It was about a pizza delivery boy who bumbles his way into organized crime (i will say it was terrible.)
On the surface, my work now is about things that excite me: secrets, abandoned places, hauntings, pirates, witches, cool monsters (especially goblins and shapeshifters), the sea, deep forests, spooky swamps, wet caves, mysterious treasure, unnatural storms, and cemeteries where not everyone is the same kind of dead.
But the bones of my work are about things that hurt me: how liminal spaces and the people who occupy them get shouldered aside; found family or even just siblings making up for the supposed-to-be-family that failed; the burden of expectations on young people and the storm they must endure when they reject that shit; and never enough queer people surviving & thriving. ❥
My latest non-pizza-mafia-based manuscript is called What the Darkness Would Keep (i will say this one is good). Until it maybe turns into a real book, you can read some of my short stories for free.
Crop of the fake cover for What the Darkness Would Keep, because i make them for each of my manuscripts before i shred them to line my nest
illustration
primarily: watercolor | ink | digital
My truest love is comics, but i also love street art, thought-provoking contemporary art, clever installations, heartfelt fan art, and like, all of the illustrations forever ❥
- Commissions are currently closed.
- Patreon “Shark Seeker” postcard tier is full.
For now, you can still look at my sketches, postcards, shows, and comics + cartoons, all straight from the creepy depths of my brain, or the commercial illustrations and commissions i’ve done, straight from the creepy depths of other people’s brains.
Illustration of “Nattraven,” a marvelous, haunting story by Alex Creece in Norwegian American Weekly
editorial
years of experience have taught me: your story is worth more than you think
I didn’t think i would become an editor when i attended two residential story-crafting workshops–i just knew i wanted to write. But through my work on the submissions team at Tor.com, the freelance projects that kept finding their way into my inbox, and my fabulous critique group, i discovered a talent for intuiting what the author meant to convey even when it didn’t make it to the page, and more importantly, addressing the discrepancy in a way that makes them excited to roll up their sleeves and get back in there.
And i love doing it. ❥
A stone carving of me casually riding a sphinx backward in one of my many togas whilst i enjoy your manuscript