On the Ice of Nix

Years ago, I used to look at issues of Nature and daydream about contributing to one of its articles. That never happened, alas, but today I came as close to that as I possibly could without conducting actual research, publishing a flash story in Nature Futures, which is part of the zine.

(As proof, I have a contract signed with the people at Nature!)

So that’s pretty cool. This is also pretty cool because the story, On the Ice of Nix, which Valya Dudycz Lupescu calls “evocative,” is the rare sort that pulls something from my own life – vertigo – with something that I have never and probably never will have in my life, space travel.

(With that said, I’m kinda cringing over the bit about the inspiration for the story at the bottom. I hate writing those sorts of things, and although what I wrote there isn’t technically completely wrong – this story was written right after a bad episode with vertigo – I can think of other things during a bad attack other than the feeling that I’m about to fall off the planet – or that the planet is about to fall out of orbit – or that I can certainly feel the planet speeding through the universe and just going too fast and —

Anyway.)

Enjoy!

So You Want to Reach the Witch at the Edge of the Void

At Daily Science Fiction today, I give a list of reasons why you might not want to travel out to the edge of a galaxy to reach a witch.

This Is the Moment, Or One of Them

My latest short story, “This Is the Moment, Or One of Them,” is now up at Apex.

Writing this story was….quite something. I began writing it in April 2020, which was for a number of reasons – not just Covid – not the best time to start writing anything. Midway through, I realized the story was going to feature Covid –

And that was a problem.

Because midway through was also about when a number of short fiction editors started issuing warnings that they were getting flooded with Covid stories and would be rejecting most of them. And here I was, writing two – a fantasy story and an SF story. Worse, the fantasy story (eventually picked up by Departure Mirror) was written in an academic style, making it a hard sale even without the mention of Covid, and the SF one was non linear – again, making it a hard sale without the mention of Covid.

What am I doing to myself, I asked myself and a few other writing friends. Why am I not focusing on stories that, you know, could actually sell? Especially since Covid was only one element of an SF story that was really about something else.

And yet, those were the two stories I could focus on – with the fantasy story focusing on the disability aspects of Covid, and the SF one focusing on, well, other things. So I did, adding various local elements to make the SF story – I hoped – feel more real, and then grimly watching the rejections pile up – until late October, when Apex let me know that I hadn’t wasted my time after all. (Departure Mirror told me the same in November.).

The story has been out in ebook format for a week now, and online for a day or so. It is, as warned, a Covid story. It is, also, for all its speculative elements, very much a story drawn from real life – almost everything in the flashback portions (the pottery classes, the cafes) exists in real life – and survived the pandemic.

You can read it here.

Enjoy!

The Middle Child’s Practical Guide to Surviving a Fairy Tale/Deathlight

The latest issue of Fireside Fiction just went live, and with it, my short story, The Middle Child’s Practical Guide to Surviving a Fairy Tale, the story I read at last year’s World Fantasy Con and this year’s ICFA. Originally written as a Twitter joke, it slowly grew into a blog post, as these things do, and then mutated into a short story.

Also just going live, the latest issue of Lightspeed, available for subscribers or as an individual issue, which includes my short story, “Deathlight,” along with new short stories by An Owomoyela,  Seanan McGuire, and Wole Talabi, reprints from a number of well known names including Tim Pratt and Elizabeth Hand, and Hugh Howey’s “The Plagiarist.”

I may have a bit more to say about this one once my individual story goes live on the web on May 17, but for now, I’ll just note that the two stories are, I think, quite different – and not just because one is more or less fantasy (if a bit snarky about it) and the other marks my return to hard science fiction.

Enjoy!

Inhabiting Your Skin

My latest short story, Inhabiting Your Skin, just popped up at Apex Magazine, along with an interview with me, where I talk about some of the stories that I’ve written, and admit that I’m still having problems programming the microwave oven. What can I say? It’s a rather terrifying oven.

Offgrid

My short story, Offgrid, just appeared in Three-Lobed Burning Eye today.

I can’t actually play many video games – most of them tend to make me rather dizzy – but that hasn’t prevented me from wondering what it would be like to live in one most of the time.

Available for purchase and for preorder:

Available for purchase today, the July issue of Nightmare Magazine, which includes my story “Death and Death Again.”  You can pick it up here. It’s a little foray into pure, unadulterated horror.

And available for preorder today, Upgraded, an anthology of cyborg stories edited by Neil Clarke, containing my story, “Memories and Wire.” You can preorder it here. The book should be available later this month; I’m really looking forward to seeing the other stories in it.

That both these pieces are appearing in the same month is a fun coincidence, given their somewhat similar themes – especially since although I don’t think I’d classify “Memories and Wire” as pure horror, it’s definitely edging in that direction.

(The other little story coming out this month from Daily Science Fiction is something else entirely, but more on that later.)