FICTIONISTA
Two exes and their new girlfriends on double-date hell night at the rankest pizza dive in creation end up biting off more than they can chew. A bittersweet first-contact story best consumed nowhere near mealtime.
In print (Pulp Literature #32) and now FREE AUDIO at StarShipSofa!!! Narrated by bestselling author Alethea Kontis.
A couple books (lovely, lovely boooooooks) arrived recently via post. One is this Danish anthology of translated stories, 48 timer i Massachusetts-havet: 14 science fiction klimafiktioner, in which my underwater-city climate fiction “Drowntown” appears alongside stories by Carrie Vaughn, Cat Valente, Sam J. Miller, Ken Liu, Pat Murphy, Lavie Tadhar… I mean wow! What a crew.
Fun Fact: Danish was once my second language! After years of unuse, it mostly it just pops awkwardly into my brainspace during attempts at French or Spanish.
The author, gettin’ drowny with cli-fi:
Dark Lane #10 includes my story “The Epiphany Engine,” where an emoji-awkward muralist travels across an ocean to meet the machine capable of erasing artistic angst.
Very pleased to say my kooky vandalism story “Killer Biznez“ has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for the year’s best crime short story. Weed trays, favorite cousins, misspelled graffiti & questionable fashion apps — exciting times!
Lovely cover for the Black Static 78/79 Double Issue, which includes my paraforensics & secret histories story “Of Wrath.”
My story “Nightshift in Strange Rain” is out in the February 2021 issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine. From the publisher: “Green blood and trench coats and death in the rain—an old-fashioned murder detective and his coroner ex-flame tackle a newfangled problem in this retrofuture gumshoe tale set in a small town not at all close to you. “
On Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions, or free at one of the 30,000+ libraries and schools worldwide via Flipster.
♥ Huge love to all librarians everywhere.♥
Supershort fable “The Girl-Shaped Jar,” written as Camille Alexa, is this week’s flash fiction flashback over at Flash Fiction Online. Watermelons in square jars, man-meat, and a mini interview in which I confesss the toughest author gig of my life was as the guest of an eighth grade English class studying this story…
In “Otherwhen,” a young woman obsesses over the exact measurement of seconds and minutes to process trauma after seriously injuring a possible time traveller in a highway collision. Look for this one in 2021 from the new Canadian speculative literary magazine Fusion Fragment.
The intrepid Miss Ruby Lamb will be adding her rendition of my short story “A Peripheral Vision Sort of Friend” to tonight’s virtual edition of Campfire Queer Storytime, which in a less bepandemicked era was hosted at the Vortex Theater in Austin, Texas. Instead the event will be broadcast & archived on YouTube. Sunday, October 11, 2020 from 7-8pm CDT.
Shine on, beautiful distant diamonds.
“Short fiction writers, of all genres, for any number of reasons, surely must universally dread the question: What are your stories about? The smart thing to do (a path one sadly rarely chooses, amiright?) would be to not overthink the business and toss off a quick, “I tend to write crime fiction” (or “historical” or “westerns”—or even “historical crime westerns with hot time-traveling feminist werewolves”*). But such limited answers feel so ungenuine, so inadequate, so lacking the scope of what you write, right?”
*Sadly, there is no story like this in the works, but you can read my personal essay “The Moment Expectations Change” in its entirety over at the Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine blog, where I reminisce (drinks with writer pals in a Portlandian bordello bar! barstool fiddlefaddle and coffee shop philosophizing!) and talk about the joy of seeing short fiction translate to the screen. This one’s in celebration of my sweet petty criminal story “Killer Biznez.”