Sale! “Configuring your Quantum Disambiguator” to Nature’s Futures.

Very happy to announce that I’ve sold a story to Nature magazine’s “Futures” feature.

Nature, for those not familiar, is one of the leading scholarly science journals. More importantly for me, they also have a column that publishes sci-fi flash fiction. This is my first sale to them out of four submissions. The story is written in the form of an instruction manual, and balances absurdist humour with SFnal trope-based jokes and is generally quite weird. (There’s also a nod to Ren & Stimpy for the eagle-eyed.)

Huzzah!

Sale! Flash fiction to Plasma Frequency

I’ve sold a slipstreamy flash fiction piece called “Some Salient Details About Your Former Lives” to Plasma Frequency magazine.

Not clear yet on when exactly it will be published, but I’m happy to find a home for this one, which has done the rounds at a number of places and always come back to me. (Perhaps apt for a story about two people who continually reincarnate and kill one another?)

The story is sort of a riff on part of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide series—specifically the character of Agrajag, the poor being who was inadvertently and numerously killed by Arthur Dent. Hitchhiker’s Guide was one of those series I read over and over and over again during my formative years, so it’s nice to see a story I’ve written that’s part homage to it and its author find a happy home.

Original Fiction: “They Come in Waves” at Freeze Frame Fiction

In lieu of posting a new piece of fiction or a reprint here this week, I’d like to direct your attention to the newly-launched Freeze Frame Fiction, which just went live today.

As you may have been able to tell, I have a story in this new ‘zine! I like to joke that it’s a story about lesbian zombie romance, but stripped of hyperbole a better description might be that it’s about relationships, regret, and still zombies.

Here’s a teaser:

No breath any more.

Cold steel at the edge of the darkness, and voices.

He pushes, and with a screeching buckle there is light and scent and terror like a drug in the air.

The salty copper taste of flesh and blood.

#

Jorah sits up shivering with cold and perspiration, sure that in the moment just before her dream turned to morning she had heard a distant booming thunder like the white caps of waves falling in on themselves.

She collapses her tent, packs and shoulders her bag, and hurries on down the trail. Remembering the dream, she takes another photo and sends it to Ella.

I am here, Jorah imagines it saying. I am here, I am coming, I am sorry. Do not forget me. Love.

So if you like flash fiction, go check out my story and the rest of the pieces in the first issue of Freeze Frame Fiction!


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Published Story Alert! “After the Ascension” in Plasma Frequency

My 100-word story, “After the Ascension,” is in the April/May issue of Plasma Frequency magazine.

In lieu of a summary, here’s a very brief teaser:

When they turned off the gravity, everything went to hell.

The first few days, people kept trying to disprove reality—pulling themselves off ceilings, clambering out of windows, catapulting up into the air until their screams faded into nothing.

You can purchase a copy of the issue from the Plasma Frequency website in print or as an ebook, if you’re so enclined.