It’s a glorious day here in Canada’s adorable capital city. The air is clean, the sun is out, the leaves are set to turn into autumnal confetti. It’s with great pleasure that I look forward to appearing this weekend at Ottawa’s Conference on Canadian Content in Speculative Arts and Literature, a brisk walk from Timberhouse. I’ll be discussing Myths You’ve Never Heard Of. I’ll be reading a part in a play by local writer Hayden Trenholm. I’ll be at the launch for 49th Parallels, an anthology that explores potential Canadian alternative realities (and includes my story “As Mistress Wishes“). I’ll be giving blue pencil crits and kicking around and shooting the shit and generally having a decent time. If you’re nearby, I hope you’ll come say hello.
“Redux” in audio
The lovely people at Tales to Terrify have released my remurder story “Redux” in audio.
Read by Nikolle Doolin and keeping company with H. P. Lovecraft’s The Cats of Ulthar: REDUX.
Alien overlords!!
Tentacles! Slime trails! Kissing! Oh, the horror. The horrrrrrooorrrrr….
Over at The Arcanist, it’s:
Sweet Master Pookie-Shmookie
Audio release of “The Green Infinity”
Kudzu has fascinated me (and freaked me out) since I saw a short documentary as a kid, footage of an abandoned farmhouse being completely overtaken by the voracious vine in a matter of weeks. Thanks to rapid time-lapse techniques and public television, I experienced the event as happening in a matter of minutes — maybe even seconds. Years later on a road trip across the south I drove through miles of back-country highway shrouded by towering strangled forest, trees dead underneath but giving the semblance of life in a weird kind of vegetal zombification process, a green and vibrant undeath.
Here’s my fiction tribute to this slow-motion strangler of the plant kingdom, now in audio over at new Canadian venture The Centropic Oracle:
Gothic short fiction series
UK’s Gothic series has set loose their Heroic Fantasy volume of short stories, which includes my mythpunk fable “Ravenblack.” They’re running little mini author interviews to go along with the volume’s release. Fun stuff & good times.
“Wine-Dark”
Happy to say a favorite new story of mine, “Wine-Dark” is out in Phobos Four: Deep Black Sea.
The pond behind the house is a well of flat wet darkness. Ludicrous to call this a house, with its listing gothic turrets and crumbling stone walls. She calls it the castle, which I guess makes it my castle.
The surface of the pond shimmers, ripples catching first pink hints of light almost ready to rub the sky with dawn. I tell my husband I come down every morning to feed the fish. There are no fish.
“Did you eat my fish?” I ask as her otter-sleek head breaks the pond’s black mirror.
I love this story so much, I’ve already started tinkering with a longer tale spun off this scene. Haven’t read the whole issue yet, but the lovely cover is a fantastic complement to “Wine-Dark.”
Phobos Issue Four only $6.99 on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1387045377/
“Then Our Skins, Then Our Bones” in Futuristica V.2
Holding my shiny new copy of Futuristica Volume 2 in my hot little hands. This one includes my vanquished-aliens-music-brothel story “Then Our Skins, Then Our Bones.”
Read read read read read. . . .
3 play poems in NOUS Magazine
NOUS is without doubt the most adorable magazine my work has ever appeared in. Seriously adorable, simply the physical object of it.
My copy arrived from the UK in a tidy collection-worthy packet, complete with wee little sticker and limited edition poster. Billing themselves as the “magazine for mind culture & empathic thinking,” these guys use an artisan printing process and mindful application of vivid interior color. This thing oozes loving craftsmanship.
Check out NOUS 8, the Play Issue. Includes my poems “played out,” “play me,” and “play time.”
NOUS direct link: 
http://www.nous-magazine.de/play
the collected BIG CLICK
Some time ago I had the great good pleasure to guest-edit Issue 18 of online noir/crime mag THE BIG CLICK. I solicited fabulous new stories from Ray Vukcevich and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, as well as reviews, interviews, and essays.
Sadly, the mag’s no longer running new stories. But for the next three weeks the entire collected catalogue is available as part of a noir story bundle. CHECK IT.
story bundle link:
https://storybundle.com/noir
Issue 18/ January 2015, “Bête Noir”:
http://www.thebigclickmag.com/zineshop/issue-18-january-2015
Bête Noir: Darkness at the Crossroads:
http://www.thebigclickmag.com/editorial
Ad Astra
I’ll be in Toronto this weekend talking Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror with other spectacular spec-fic shakers and makers. Come hear lively discourse, sip of the squashed grape, or wave to fellow ships, passing in the night — or come hear me read this Saturday! 12:00-12:30pm at Ad Astra in room Markham B.