I have a soft spot for stories that can be engaging without having overweening life-or-death stakes. A famous writer once gave me hell at an event for awkwardly asking if every story had to start with a bang, but as I get older, my stories are more and more about lazy, indolent werewolves hanging out in the woods trying to avoid excitement.

Werewolves show up a lot in my fiction, and you’ll see plenty of them if you stick around. But I have no patience for the horror movie cliche of the mindless slasher, so my werewolf stories are mostly about the gentle friction between affable monsters and suspicious humans. In “To Market,” a hungry werewolf pack sends one of its own to steal food from a new rural supermarket.