I have two new flash fiction pieces and one longer short story out in the virtual wild this month. Two are fairly depressing near-future SF stories that involve climate change and the third is an off-the-rails time travel romp. So that’s fun?
How to Break Causality…
First up, in new magazine Translunar Travelers Lounge, is the fun one of the batch, “How to Break Causality and Write the Perfect Time Travel Story.”
What do you do when a future version of yourself shows up with a time machine while you’re struggling through a first draft? Steal her time machine for inspiration, obviously! This one should appeal to time travel fans, writers, and secret time travellers who have accidentally set causality reeling while trying to convince their former future self not to go back in time to tell their original past self to steal their original future self’s time machine.
I mean… We’ve all been there, right?
I’m joined in the table of contents by friends Aidan Doyle and L Chan, along with a bunch of other authors I’m looking forward to reading. If you have $3 to spare, please consider purchasing an ebook copy of the magazine so they can stick around and publish more issues. We need more fun SFF in our lives!
Three Tales the River Told
Next up, in Nature magazine’s “Futures” feature, is “Three Tales the River Told,” a fairly bleak little story about the effect Anthropocene climate change could have on our vital, life-giving rivers.
Siu Fan wants to be a star. But when she takes a contract that will get her new fans–and her sent to the environmentally hostile surface world to hike a dry riverbed–the experience will change far more than her follower count.
This is my fourth time in Nature and it’s always a thrill to be in such a widely-circulated, well-respected magazine. As is traditional, I wrote a blog post which talks about the inspiration for the story so be sure to give that a read after you’ve read the story itself!
“Three Tales a River Told” came from–among other places, a title. Over at Codex Writers Group, Vylar Kaftan sometimes runs a “title rummage sale,” where you pick a title supplied by another author and write a story to it. In this case, the title was written by Aimee Ogden. Thanks, Vylar and Aimee!
The Colours of Europa, the Colours of Home
“The Colours of Europa, the Colours of Home” (cw: parent dealing with death of a child) is the third new story out there, in Canadian climate change magazine Little Blue Marble.
Yihan lives on Ling-Xian station, working on a scientific mission scanning Europa’s sub-surface ocean for exotic microbes and avoiding thoughts of home as much as she can. Will a message from her mother–and another from her sole surviving daughter–finally help her put her guilt about the past at rest and return home?
Little Blue Marble is a great magazine, and relies on its supporters to keep putting out work that centers our changing climate. You can support their mission here.
What Else am I Doing?
Still plugging away at the novel, sigh! The summer was largely a wash–we sold our house and moved into a new one, and that took up a lot of time. That, and a few setbacks in terms of “Hey let’s completely change the 3rd act of the novel” and “Hey let’s also completely change the 2nd act what could happen HA HA” means I still have a lot of work to do. But I’m still aiming at the end of the year to be finished, so … buckling down!