New story! What a Big Heart You Have is out in Kaleidotrope. The more I thought about the Red Riding Hood story, the more I thought that the grandmother/granddaughter relationship was pretty sketched-in…and it’s been one of the most important ones in my life. Hope you enjoy.
Tag: short story glory
Short stuff I liked, third quarter 2025
Thirteen Swords That Made a Prince: Highlights From the Arms & Armory Collection, Sharang Biswas (Strange Horizons)
Biologists say it will take at least a generation for the river to recover (Klamath River Hymn), Leah Bobet (Reckoning)
Watching Migrations, Keyan Bowes (Strange Horizons)
With Only a Razor Between, Martin Cahill (Reactor)
And the Planet Loved Him, L. Chan (Clarkesworld)
Holly on the Mantel, Blood on the Hearth, Kate Francia (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
The Jacarandas Are Unimpressed By Your Show of Force, Gwynne Garfinkle (Strange Horizons)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gorgon, Gwynne Garfinkle (Penumbric)
In Connorville, Kathleen Jennings (Reactor)
Orders, Grace Seybold (Augur)
Brooklyn Beijing, Hannah Yang (Uncanny)
Now free to read!
In May the subscribers of If There’s Anyone Left got to read my short story, The Things You Know, The Things You Trust. Now it’s free to read online! Go, read, enjoy!
Back on pilgrimage
Good news, fellow humans! My short story A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places, which appeared last year in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, is a finalist for the WSFA Small Press Award for short fiction.
I am seriously chuffed about this for a number of reasons. One, you know how everyone always says it’s an honor just to be a finalist? You know why they say that? Because it is in fact an honor just to be a finalist. So many wonderful stories come out in this field every year that–well, you’ve seen my yearly recommendation lists. They’re quite long. Winnowing them to any smaller group? Amazing, thank you, could easily have been a number of other highly qualified stories by wonderful writers, I am literally just glad to be on the team and hope I can help the ball club. Er, programming staff.
But here’s another reason: if you’ve read that story–which you can do! please do! it’s free, and it turns out people like it!–you will immediately see that it is a story about a disabled person. That disabled person is not me, does not have my family or my career or anything like that. But it is my disability. I put my own disability into this story. I gave someone with my disability a story in which they do not have to be “fixed” to be the hero. And…this is not a disability-focused award. This is just an award for genre short fiction. So I particularly appreciate that the people who were selecting stories looked a story with a disabled protagonist whose disability is inherent to the story without being the problem that needs solving and said, yeah, we appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate you too.
A bridge too far
New story out today in Clarkesworld: A Shaky Bridge ! This one is more directly referential to current events than most of my science fiction, while also drawing on my experience with my dad having strokes. So this is not the most happy-clappy upbeat story I’ve ever written…but it is one that I feel good about having out there, and I hope you’ll like it too.
When listicles go wrong
New story out today! Things I Miss About Civilization appears in Nature Futures. Just a scientist, a slightly broken spaceship, and the great expanse between galaxies….
Stories I’ve Liked, 2nd Quarter 2025
As Safe As Fear, Beth Cato (Daikajuzine)
In the Shells of Broken Things, A.T. Greenblatt (Clarkesworld)
The Name Ziya, Wen-yi Lee (Reactor)
Barbershops of the Floating City, Angela Liu (Uncanny)
Everyone Keeps Saying Probably, Premee Mohamed (Psychopomp)
Lies From a Roadside Vagabond, Aaron Perry (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For, Cameron Reed (Reactor)
Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything, Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots)
Unbeaten, Grace Seybold (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Unfinished Architectures of the Human-Fae War, Caroline Yoachim (Uncanny)
Trade show! in! spaaaaaace!
New story out today in Lightspeed magazine: All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. Visit the space gift shop trade convention and learn who’s most likely to try to ruin things for all of us (hint: it’s Earth people, UGH).
Don’t miss the Author Spotlight discussing the story afterwards!
When it all changes
New story out today in ebook format! Print copy to follow for those who want that. “The Things You Know, The Things You Trust” appears in If There’s Anyone Left, vol. 5. It’s a look at life’s constants in the face of great change, which are sometimes where we hope they are and sometimes…other places.
The Bee Wife, by Francesca Forrest
Review copy provided by the author, who is an online pal.
This is a stand-alone short story with a lavish illustration. It features a well-delineated family despite the short length of the tale, each member an individual–and each showing a different facet of grief. There’s beekeeping magic here, but the core of the tale is a family’s loss and how they move through it together, not always in sync but always with love. The prose style reminded me of fables, of just-so stories, but the human heart is stronger than in most of those.