Every Story Every Publication All at Once
After a reasonably quiet year as I’ve been a) working on a novel and getting it polished for querying, and b) raising a small human being, I've suddenly found myself confronted with a sudden rush of short fiction publications. To such an extent that I’ve even been compelled to break open the hardly used “news” page to set them all out.
Born from the Drowning Forest
Born from the Drowning Forest appeared in the 17 October 2022 issue of Strange Horizon.
This story means a lot to me. It really feels like a culmination of a lot of separate strands of my short fiction writing: cli-fi, magical realism, sad yet optimistic, and inevitably set in some part of Britain. It’s about raising children in a climate emergency, obviously something that has been preoccupying my mind as I turned 30 and have the most delightful little one to look after. It’s sad, it’s hopeful, it’s magical. Also, it is accompanied by the most amazing bit of artwork by Kaylee Rowena.
I hope you read it, enjoy it, and then take action accordingly to save this planet of ours for future generations to come.
The Cosmopod
The Cosmopod can be found in NewMyths’s latest anthology: Neosapiens.
The Cosmopod, in this case, is a small octopus-esque alien named Simon. Since I favour fantasy a little more over science fiction, and near sci-fi over other genres such as space operas, I actually haven’t had the chance to write about aliens very often! But this story is about a research team on a tidally locked planet who discovers a lake filled with alien life, including our dear old Simon. It’s a nice little story about what alien life might look like, and the dangers of our desire to help without proper understanding of the world beyond us.
Interview with Sole Refugee from A303 Incident
This is an old story, which I have written about before and was previously been published at Wyldblood Magazine. However, I was very honoured to have it included in Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume 4.
I am very thrilled to have appeared in all four volumes of this anthology, and each of them has been a delight. This one is no exception, including the Sir Julius Vogel Award winning short story Data Migration by Melanie Harding-Shaw. Interview with Sole Refugee from A303 Incident is, even by my own standards, a very odd and weird story: part traffic jam from hell but also drawing from works like Roadside Picnic. At its heart, though, is the celebration of community and humanity, but only if you’re prepared to let it and allow other such superfluous concerns to fall away.
Watch this space: Seven Minutes in Heaven
And we aren’t even done yet! Next month, Seven Minutes in Heaven will be appearing in the November edition of Aurealis. I love this story as much as I love Born from the Drowning Forest. It is a story about a world with an actual Sun God, and what occurs in the moments during an eclipse. I can’t wait to share it!
But until then, good reading!
