Irini knows the world she grew up in isn’t her home — and now she’s found a way to escape.
“The Clockwork World” is a new Irini story, and my second story for MYTHIC: A Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine. It’s out now in issue #20.
For a list of all the Irini stories, click here.
“The Park of Future Heroes,” an Irini story originally published in Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine in April 2022, has now been reprinted in Best of Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, Vol. 5.
I have a new story, “Cat Mountain,” in the fourth issue of The Vanishing Point Magazine. It’s about hiking, relationships and mortality.
From the promotional copy: “This issue goes to some dark places, both literal and metaphorical. It’s packed to the brim with ten brand-new tales by ten fantastic writers. This issue is full of haunts and aliens and bleak futures and glimpses of the afterlife. It’s all here where the lines of reality and imagination intersect, at the Vanishing Point.”
My story “Taming the Land” is in the 103rd issue of Fireside Magazine. It’s about the sacrifices made by an unusual group of settlers when they terraform a Venus-like planet—and the new opportunities those bring.
It was a privilege to work with Fireside. They provided thoughtful edits and gave me multiple opportunities to look over the final product. That makes it even more disappointing that this will be the influential magazine’s final issue. They’re accepting support for ongoing maintenance costs.
I developed a board game, Road to Rock, about the travails of being in a traveling band. My wife and kids helped with playtesting and provided some great ideas. Peder Bergstrand, the designer, also streamlined some of the rules.
Cards and board segments will be included with each of the nine vinyl releases from Blues Funeral Recordings‘ PostWax Vol. II Subscription Series. The Grape Vinyl just unboxed the first album, Josiah‘s We Lay on Cold Stone:
My story “Kor Shell Soup” is in the new anthology Grandpa’s Deep-Space Diner from JayHenge Publishing. This massive anthology contains 53 stories, and each one I’ve read so far has been impressive.
“Kor Shell Soup” is a reprint of “Harnessing the Sun,” published originally in Daikaiju Zine and the topic of the interview “How to Write Alien Cultures.”
My story “The Park of Future Heroes” is out in the April issue of Penumbric.
“The Park of Future Heroes” is an Irini story, chronologically set between “Irini” and “A Protector on the Road,” both of which appeared in Broadswords and Blasters. It’s my favorite Irini story to date.
The complete list of Irini stories is here.
I hope you check out the rest of the stories and poems in the issue as well, and please support the magazine!
The author Todd Sullivan interviewed me for his YouTube channel about how to write alien cultures, using my story “Harnessing the Sun” as an example. Harnessing the Sun was published in Daikaiju Zine in 2020, and will be reprinted under the name “Kor Shell Soup” in Grandpa’s Deep-Space Diner, an anthology coming from JayHenge Publishing later this year.
The interview is just over seven minutes long. Todd Sullivan interviews authors from all over the world about their work and practice, so check out his channel for more.
I have a review of the Apple TV+ series Foundation in Interstellar Flight Press. The summary: I liked some of it, just nothing that had to with the Foundation.
Reviews are, in my humble opinion, one of the best writing gigs you can have, because people send you things you want for free and then magazines pay you to discuss them. Unfortunately, once I had kids, something had to go, and it wasn’t going to be fiction, so I mostly stopped writing articles and reviews.
However, nothing’s more fun than arguing about art and media, so after I ranted to my wife for a while about the problems with the Foundation series (she listened politely, while truly, deeply and comprehensively not caring about a single word I said), I decided the world at large should have the benefit of my opinions. I had enough fun writing it that I’m going to try to find time to start rotating review writing back into my schedule.
You may wonder why the review is out after the first season is done. That was actually intentional on the magazine’s part: I had originally written the review halfway through the season, but they asked me to wait and review the season as a whole.
Whether you agree or disagree with anything in the review, I’d love to hear your opinions.
My micro fiction story “Carpe Noctum” was published yesterday in 50-Word Stories.
The hotel in the story is inspired by a real hotel in downtown Albuquerque. My best friend had discovered that the window at the end of one hallway was kept unlocked, and you could climb out through it and up onto the roof. As I recall, he did this multiple times over the course of several years before the hotel started locking it. This is a picture I took from the ground floor of the same hotel when a small group of us went there for drinks a few years ago.
