Short Story News, May 2015

I've been a bit remiss in keeping up to date with short story news this last month or so, which is unfortunate because I've had an unusually large amount of stuff out.  But it's nice in a way, in that now I get to post about it all together and it looks like I have a ton of stories out in great venues every month!

Truth is, though, that even by the standards of the markets I've been lucky enough to sell to, this has been a really excellent selection.  Taking them in chronologically reverse order, it was a mere couple of days ago that my weird horror tale Caretaker in the Garden of Dreams appeared in The Drabblecast.  This is a story that's been around a bit, and this isn't even the first time it's been podcast - that honour goes to the now sadly defunct Shadowcast - and everywhere it's appeared it's been treated more than decently.  Caretaker was editor's choice in the issue of Necrotic Tissue it appeared in, made their all-time best of anthology, got a terrific - and terrifically grotesque - illustration from The Shadowcast and this time around receives an absolutely brilliant rendition, with not only an evocative reading from David Cummings of the No Sleep Podcast but some perfectly chosen sound effects.  All bias aside, this thing is weird and creepy and I urge you to give it a listen!

Then, a mere few days behind that, and wrapped within that glorious cover over there, we had Jonathan Green's anthology Sharkpunk, which has been a part of my life for so long now that I'm almost sad that it's out.  Still, it is, and it's brilliant, surely the definitive take on a beastie that was crying out for its own definitive anthology, and it's already garnering some gushing reviews.  There's this at The Eloquent Page, and particularly nice from my point of view, both The Ginger Nuts of Horror and Geek Planet Online pick out my The Shark in the Heart for special mention.

Next is a bit of cheat, in that I suspect it's been out for a while now, but due to the tectonic slowness of the US to UK postal service I only recently got my contributor copies.  Anyway, it's the anthology of Clarkesworld's seventh year, unexpectedly titled Clarkesworld Year Seven, it contains my Across the Terminator, and of course it's amazing because it's bloody Clarkesworld. 


Then, lastly and not at all leastly, in that I'm only talking about it so late because I somehow hadn't entirely realised it was out, there's Mark Teppo's XIII anthology from Resurrection House.  A curio this, in the best sense of the word, and perhaps more at the literary end of the genre spectrum than the kind of markets I tend to appear in, but in a world where there are people who still think editing yet another zombie anthology is an exciting prospect, it's so damn nice to see a theme anthology where the theme - transformation, rebirth and that titular number - is so unabashedly weird. XIII really is a treasure, and it received about the most thorough review I've ever seen at Tangent Online, which by the way has extremely nice things to say about my Twilight For the Nightingale.

Oh, and speaking of people saying nice things ... let's end by pointing out that David Steffen recently picked out my story Ill-Met at Midnight for his top fifteen Beneath Ceaseless Skies podcasts at SF Signal!  If you haven't listened to it yet then it's still available here.

Short Fiction News, Mid-2014

I'm currently on the train back from Nine Worlds, which was for the most part a lot of fun, but which I'm at this precise moment too tired, hungover, and not-quite-sure-of-exactly-what-I-thought to try and blog about.  So here's one I prepared earlier...

I remember writing quite a grumbly post when I got my first short story acceptance of 2014, that being Twitcher to the fine folks at Pseudopod, thanks to the fact that it came in goddamn May and four and a bit months is a fair while to go without a sale.  (In fact it had been quite a bit more than that because the tail end of 2013 hadn't been exactly brilliant either.)  Well, it's August now and I'm grumbling substantially less.  In fact if things were to keep on like the last couple of months then I'd be happy indeed ... which of course they probably won't, so I'd better get my positivism in while I can:

- First up I sold Twilight For the Nightingale, the story I'd been unhelpfully referring to as my homoerotic supervillain story, to Resurrection House's forthcoming XIII anthology.  I'm hopeful that this will be one of those rare perfect pairings of story and market, because it sounds like it's going to be a terrifically bonkers book.  I mean, you know when editors normally say they want something a bit like Neil Gaiman or whatever?  Mark Teppo name-checked Kafka, Gene Wolfe, Darren Aronofsky and David Lynch.  I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on this one.

- Out of the blue I got some good news, not to mention a little unexpected cash, when Kat Rocha of 01 Publishing got in touch to say that the previously e-book only Whispers From the Abyss collection, which includes my My Friend Fishfinger By Daisy, Age 7, had done well enough to warrant a print edition.  As I've noted before now, this was a terrific little collection and deserves to do well.  I've since discovered that 01 have run a Kickstarter for the project, which has finished now but remains well worth checking out for its fantastic trailer.  If I wasn't due two copies as a contributor then I suspect this would have been the first Kickstarter I got actively involved with, because I want me a Star Spawn poster something bad.

- Soon after that I got my quickest ever acceptance, when relatively new outfit Eldritch Press got back to me within four hours to say that they'd like to take my story Br(other) for their upcoming Our World of Horror anthology.  I genuinely assumed this was some sort of mistake until the contract came through, because four hours.  That's barely even a real amount of time.  I mean, I've spent that long in the shower before now.  Anyway, if the cover art is anything to go by then this one is going by both great and seriously warped. 

- I realised that I might as well send one of the short comic scripts I've been sitting on for years to Futurequake, who published a couple of my early efforts in that department a few years back.  The one I opted for was a story called Conservationists,which I'm hopeful may be the only occasion of anyone telling an alien invasion story through the eyes of an urban fox.  It's a frankly insane, completely dialogue-free bit of work, and I can't wait to see what an artist makes of it.

- Last but not least, and unusually up to the minute in that I only found out three hours ago, but Jonathan Green, official Nicest Man in Fantasy (and yet, paradoxically, the world's meanest Just a Minute player), let me know that he'll be using my The Shark in the Heart for his forthcoming-next-year-from-Snow Books anthology Sharkpunk. 

Because yes, apparently, now that's a thing.

So there we go.  I'm still way behind on my target for this year, which should theoretically be going really well due to all the additional time I have and in fact is going worse than last year, when I had hardly any time at all.  But a couple of good months surely does take the edge off, and who knows?  There may yet come another surge of goodnewsery before the year is out.