Short Story News, May 2016

To my surprise, things continue to trundle along apace on the short fiction front, at least enough to warrant another post on the subject only a couple of months after the last one.

The most up-to-the-minute development is that my paranoiac science fiction short Team Invasion is now available to read for free in the first issue of new pro 'zine Liminal Stories, along with five other tales.  I've not had the change to read them yet but they all look intriguing, and the accompanying illustrations are fantastic.  Incidentally, one of the nicest back-handed compliments I've received was that my mum was worried to tell me what she thought of Team Invasion because it had disturbed her so much.  I spent a few minutes feeling pleased with myself before I realised that traumatising your mother perhaps isn't an achievement to be proud of.  Still, this one was meant to be all kinds of unsettling. so at the least I got the desired result from one reader.

On the subject of stories coming out, there's also Dancing in the Winter Rooms, which, having already appeared as its own adorable e-book, has since made it into the latest Digital Fiction Publishing anthology, Ctrl Alt Delight.  I know I go on a lot about these (after all, I've been in four of them now, with more on the way!) but they really are excellent, varied collections, at a wholly reasonable price, and I always look forward to digging into them.  For those with catholic sci-fi tastes, they're definitely worth a look.

Of course, I say that having sold another story to Digital - this time, Rindelstein's Monsters, to the fantasy wing - but hey!  And in other sales news, my story Witch House is going to be in the second issue of fairly new, definitely exciting magazine Shattered Prism - which, I only realised after I'd submitted, lives under the umbrella of my C21st Gods publisher Rosarium.  Anyway, Witch House is a slice of (literally) magical realism and a particularly English modern folk tale, though with some larger concerns ticking away in the background.

Perhaps the strangest sale I've made of late, though, was when I got an e-mail out of the blue from the editor of forthcoming anthology Far Orbit: Last Outpost, a book I'd submitted to and been rejected from some months before, asking if my story Risk Assessment was still available.  I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it turns out that the only thing nicer than an acceptance is an acceptance, months later, of a story that's already been rejected.  As the title suggests, we're talking military sci-fi here, though Risk Assessment is a little closer to the parody edge of that genre, which is perhaps why it didn't make the cut the first time around.  At any rate, I remember the precise moment when the idea for this one came to me: it was a health and safety lecture back in my MOD days, a talk so boring that what else was I supposed to do but splice it together in my head with scenes from Starship Troopers?

Last up, the Mysterion anthology - a book I'm really looking forward to, purely because its focus on genre stories drawing upon the weirder aspects of Christian theology is something I've not seen done elsewhere - now has an official table of contents.  After reading on their blog that the editors were receiving an overabundance of stories with one word biblical place name titles, I'm rather proud that Golgotha was the only one to survive the cut!  And, in fairness, I can't imagine this story under any other title.  Anyway, here's the line-up, along with the rather gorgeous cover:


“The Monastic” by Daniel Southwell
“When I Was Dead” by Stephen Case
“Forlorn” by Bret Carter
“Too Poor to Sin” by H. L. Fullerton
“Golgotha” by David Tallerman
“A Lack of Charity” by James Beamon
“Of Thine Impenetrable Spirit” by Robert B. Finegold, MD
“A Good Hoard” by Pauline J. Alama
“Yuri Gagarin Sees God” by J. S. Bangs
“Confinement” by Kenneth Schneyer
“The Angel Hunters” by Christian Leithart
“Cutio” by F. R. Michaels
“St. Roomba’s Gospel” by Rachael K. Jones
“Yuki and the Seven Oni” by  S. Q. Eries
“A Recipe for Rain and Rainbows” by Beth Cato
“This Far Gethsemane” by G. Scott Huggins
“Ascension” by Laurel Amberdine
“Cracked Reflections” by Joanna Michal Hoyt
“The Physics of Faith” by Mike Barretta
“Horologium” by Sarah Ellen Rogers

Last Testament and Devilry in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction

The latest issue of the ridiculously sublime and / or sublimely ridiculous Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction is now out to buy in print, or to read in an almost improbable number of digital formats.

Now only does it contain my story Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn, which I blithered extensively about here when Mr Theaker first accepted it, it features a very special tale by my mate Rafe McGregor.  Why so special?  Because I suggested the premise to him, that’s why.

Not to imply that I gave Rafe all his ideas or anything.  In fact, it was all the result of a deal / challenge we made each other, what seems a very long time ago.  The plan - and I can’t remember who came up with it, or exactly why - was that we’d both write a story based on a rough idea from the other.  My suggestion was for a mix of sci-fi and Lovecraftian horror set around a bomb disposal robot in a near-future middle-eastern war.  Somehow, Rafe’s brain morphed the near future into the late nineteenth century, the middle-east to India and a bomb disposal robot into elephants.

One of these days I might have a go at writing my version.  It probably won't be as good as Rafe's excellent The Last Testament.

As a point of vague interest, Rafe's suggestion to me was to write a barghest story.  The result was The Hair of the Hound, a semi-sequel to Rindelstein's Monsters, as published in the Comet Press anthology The Death Panel and featuring the same protagonist.  I really like it and I wish someone would publish it.  Comic fantasy seems to be one of the toughest possible sells in today's short fiction market and I'm never entirely sure why.

Which brings us neatly back to Theaker's, and Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn, which is definitely fantasy and hopefully at least a little bit comic.  And - did I already mention this? - it's free!

Black is the New Black

I mentioned last week that my key to successfully getting short stories accepted at the moment seems to be just to send out the same story, Caretaker in the Garden of Dreams, out over and over again, since it got picked up by two different markets within a week of each other.

Recent events have made me reconsider this rule slightly.  From now on, I'll only be sending out either Caretaker or tales that have the word "black" in the title.  Reason being, having recently had Black Sun accepted by Digital Science Fiction, I've now sold Black Horticulture to long-standing, consistently great webzine Abyss and Apex.

According to my dubious records, Abyss and Apex was the thirteenth market I ever sent to, way back in early 2006.  Since then, I've been hammering them with submissions on a regular basis, at a rate of roughly three a year.  So all told, it only took me sixteen attempts to find one they really liked!  Sometimes determination really does pay off.  Then again, sometimes they call it "stalking" and throw you in jail for it; I guess telling one situation from the other is just one of those life lessons we all have to learn sooner or later.

Anyway, Black Horticulture's kind of a special story, and I'm really glad it was the one A & A finally caved on.  In 2007 or 2008, I wrote a small handful of tales where, for the first time, I really felt like I'd nailed something, even if I wasn't completely sure what it was or what to do with it.  Black Horticulture was one of those.  If I remember rightly, the others were  Rindelstein's Monsters, which ended up in Comet Press's The Death Panel anthology, In the Service of the Guns, which landed in Space and Time, and Dancing in the Winter Rooms, coming up in Electric Velocipede.  So they've all done good, and Black Horticulture is no exception.  If it's taken a bit longer than the others, it's because - in another one of those crucial life lesson things - I discovered that sometimes you don't have to start with five pages of back story covering your hero's entire life from birth, you can just tuck that information away in a couple of lines in dialogue.  Eureka!


Right.  I'd better get back to work on my new story.  It's called Black Caretaker in the Black Garden of Black Dreams - the uplifting tale of one 1940s African-American groundskeeper's struggle to defend the baseball stadium where he works as a nightwatchman from interdimensional aliens.  Seriously, this one's gonna make me rich...

Some Theories Regarding Monsters, and Other News

A couple of bits of good news to enliven what so far has been a slow and somewhat agonising month on the writing front:

First up, I'm pleased to announce that Encounters magazine, from recent upstart press Black Matrix Publishing, will be including my story Some Theories Regarding the Current Crisis.  Some Theories is a short science-fiction tale, which I wrote a couple of years back for an anthology that (so far as I know) never saw the light of the day.  Since I'm still catching up with myself on the editing and sending stuff out front, that makes it one of the most recent of my stories to appear.  That period of the end of 2007, beginning of 2008 was when it first started to really feel like I was finding my feet, so it's great to see this stuff beginning to get out into the world.

In other, really belated news, I mentioned a while back that my poem Doppelganger - as published in Chiaroscuro webzine - received an honourable mention for anthologist-extraordinaire Ellen Datlow's annual horror best-of anthology in 2008.  What totally passed me by was that my story Rindelstein's Monsters (from the Comet Press Death Panel antho) got a nod too, for the 2009 edition.  Pretty neat that, and I fully intend to actually get into one of this things, by 2027 at the absolute latest.

Finally, if anyone's been paying attention they might have noticed that my novel wordometer doohickey has been mutating.  The good news is, I've finally broken my 100'000 word target; the bad news - you guessed it - is that there's still a ways to go.  Funland is raging out of control, and the focus now is on finishing it before it tries to take over the world or eat my brains.  I'm hopeful for getting it knocked on the head by close of play on Wednesday.  Frankly, if it isn't done by the end of the week then I might just stop.  Endings are overrated, right?

Friendly out in Theakers # 31

A few snippets of news as the year grinds to a close. First up, the new issue of the ever-wondrous Theaker's Quarterly Fiction is available for free download or purchase from Lulu. Not only does it contain my story Friendly - a wildly batshit tale of interplanetary relations and disturbing alien sportsmanship - but one can also find a tale by Alison J. Littlewood, going by the name of Day of the Bromeliads. I was introduced to Alison through the oft-mentioned-here Mr Rafe McGregor, and have since had the pleasure of catching up on a lot of her previous work - which is uniformerly great and well worth tracking down, perhaps via her website. I can't say much else about the issue, since I'm waiting for my dead tree copies to arrive from Lulu, but the cover is tremendous and TQF is never ever less than entertaining.

Not really news as such, but I finished my copy of The Death Panel, as published by Comet Press and containing my Rindelstein's Monsters, and by heck it's a good collection. Of thirteen stories, five knocked my socks off, and of the rest only one failed to float my boat, (not my own, I hasten to add). In fact, hey, I'm just going to come out and say it: David James Keaton's Nine Cops Killed for a Goldfish Cracker is the best short story I've read in ages, Keaton's the next damn Charlie Huston, and - if you have the faintest liking for hard-boiled crime or horror - you'll be screwing yourself if you don't pick this one up.

Now, since I'd like to actually get in a little writing while I'm here, the other news'll have to wait a day or two...

The Death Panel Open For Business

That other bit of news referred to in the last post is that The Death Panel - containing my Rindelstein's Monsters - is now out to buy from the publisher, Comet Press, and all good internet book retailers. Or at least Amazon and Barnes and Noble, (I haven't researched this very thoroughly!).

Truth be told, it's been out since the back end of last month, but I don't like to plug things unless I can hold them in my hands and behold their glory with mine own eyes. Perhaps the wait was unnecessary in this case, because right from the off I had a feeling that The Death Panel was going to be awesome. And lo and behold, it really is. It's a beautifully put together little tome, and you'd be hard pressed to guess it's come from a small press with only two previous titles behind them.

I can't honestly claim to have read the whole thing cover to cover since it arrived on my doorstep yesterday, but I've done some serious flicking, and I can say with confidence that Rindelstein's Monsters - my possibly bestest ever story - is in damn fine company.

And that 'Murder, Mayhem and Madness' tagline? That isn't just for show.

October Wrap Up

Just a quick post to report a few belated odds and sods of October news:

Well, the month was a bit of a triumph, all told, with a couple of very strong sales and three acceptances for non-paying but fun venues. Of the latter, and not to denigrate the other two, I'm currently most excited about the picking up of my comic strip for Mangaquake, since I've just finished the new edit. It's now called Endangered Weapon B, after its grizzly-bear-in-robot-armour hero Banjo, and it comes in at ten pages, twice as long as Fleshworld (as printed in Futurequake #10) or my forthcoming strip in Something Wicked. It's been fun to decompress the story, and I think that this is the definite high point of (my admittedly limited!) comics work so far. In short, I'm chuffed with it, and can't wait to see what an artist makes of those ten pages of utter dementedness.

I'd hoped to have a couple of things out this month, but neither has materialised; on the plus side, the anthology from Comet Press that's to feature my Rindelstein's Monsters now has a fantastic cover, a neat webpage all of its own, a release date at the back end of November, and perhaps most importantly, a name - The Death Panel. I've seen a copy of the galley, and I can say with only a hint of bias that this one is going to be awesome.

Last up, I found yet another review of The Living Dead, which is both staggeringly thorough and singles out Stockholm Syndrome for credit - in the shape of a 4 out of 5 rating. At least, I hope it's out of five, and not say, seventy-three. Either way, cheers to reviewer Gregory Tidwell.

Rindelstein Committed

Rafe McGregor, friend and persistently excellent crime writer, says that Rindelstein's Monsters is my best story. He should probably know, having read just about everything I've written (a staggering task for anybody), assisted in more than a few rewrites, and generally helped to keep this show on the road for the last three years or so.

I would certainly place it in my top five, and I have to admit I'm very proud of it. I've always been determined that, however everything else fell out, Rindelstein's would make it to a good home - one where it's oddities (and it has a lot!) would be appreciated as well as its virtues.

Well, finger's crossed, Comet Press is that home. Rindelstein's Monsters, my possibly-best-yet story, will be appearing in their forthcoming horror /crime anthology, which - judging by their output and reception so far - should be nothing short of awesome. If you're going to buy one anthology with a David Tallerman story in this year, make it this one. Or failing that, one of the others. Or donate the money to a kitten sanctuary. Or buy yourself a new T-shirt, maybe one with a funny slogan or something. Hey, it's your life.