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2019 original fiction publications

Posted on December 29, 2019 by Stewart

Hello, readers! I haven’t been updating this blog, so consider this post a belated announcement of my 2019 publications.

I’m going to list them in reverse chronological order (most recent first!) but if you’re reading for awards season, I’m particularly pleased with “Three Tales the River Told” (bleak eco-SF) and “How to Break Causality and Write the Perfect Time Travel Story” (zany time travel), both of which are flash fiction.

“Music, Love, and Other Things that Damned Cat has Peed on”

Kimiko just wants to find love and make music, but her cat has other ideas. And then there’s that old book she unearths, the one with all the weird runes and descriptions of human sacrifice. It’s creepy, but pretty fucking punk.

Inspired by the true story of my cat, who went through a phase of peeing on damn near everything. (Reader, he did not like his litter box, apparently.) Contains broken bones, pseudo-Lovecraftiana, queer characters, and, well, what it says on the cover, really. Sorry-not-sorry.

Published in October 2019, in Zenon Publishing’s A Punk Rock Future, which has punk stories that range from fun to serious from a lot of brilliant authors. Erica Satifka! Sarah Pinsker! Maria Haskins! Spencer Ellsworth! Available on Indiebound, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

“Three Tales the River Told”

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.

Published in August 2019, in Nature. Read it for free online, and follow it up with my guest post on the Future Conditional blog.

The title came first with this one. For that, I’m indebted to Vylar Kaftan, who runs an annual Title Rummage Sale contest on Codex Writers Group where you write a story from someone else’s title, and to Aimee Ogden, who provided the title itself.

“The Colours of Europa, the Colours of Home”

(CW: death of a child; parental grief)

When Yihan’s youngest daughter dies of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, she buries herself in her research, taking a position on Ling-Xian Station searching the Europan sea for exotic microbes that could be used in new kinds of antibiotic. But will her search for forgiveness–and her guilt at not being there–keep her away from her living daughter, left at home in her grandmother’s care?

Published in August 2019, in Little Blue Marble. Read it for free online or you can wait a bit and purchase the 2019 anthology.

“How to Break Causality and Write the Perfect Time Travel Story”

Jaunts through the Mesozoic, plots to assassinate H.G. Wells, questionable writing advice, splitting headaches, and the importance of a balanced breakfast. All this and more, just because you stole your future self’s time machine… A cautionary tale of what happens when you sacrifice everything for your art and/or when you take advice too literally. (Or something.)

Published in August 2019, in the inaugural issue of Translunar Travelers Lounge. Read it for free online or purchase a copy on Amazon and support this great new market!

Author and tireless reviewer Charles Payseur had some very kind things to say about this one:

I do appreciate that the story mixes these things that are rather ridiculous, almost joking, and mixes in some much more real moments. Angst and fear and uncertainty where the second person “you” of the story just wants so badly to be a writer, to be an Author……… It’s a surprisingly deep and complicated piece, given that it might be easy to read it solely as a joke.

“Things that are rather ridiculous” being mixed with “real moments” is very much on brand for at least half of my flash fiction, so give this one a read!

“Communications from the Honeymoon Suite”

Dr. Laurie Vernederen will do just about anything to prove her theories and get tenure–including a jaunt back through time from Hotel Stormcove’s most luxurious suite. But of course, with time travel being time travel, there’s never a guarantee of being first…

The anthology this was published in, Five Minutes at Hotel Stormcove, required each story to take place over five minutes. Each of the five minutes in my story is represented by snippets of some kind of communication from a different century–starting in the 2160s and going all the way back to the 1700s. (Because time travel, of course.)

One of the neatest things about this one, to me, is that the publisher printed each of the story’s five sections in a different, era-appropriate font. So the 2005 instant messaging communication is in AOL-style Times New Roman, the newspaper clipping from the 1800s is presented in a newspaper-like font, and so on.

Published in Five Minutes at Hotel Stormcove by Atthis Arts publishing. The anthology is a lot of fun, so go pick up a copy at the Atthis Arts web store!

Untitled Nopperabou Game

Bonus! In late October, I wrote a piece of interactive fiction (IF) for Ectocomp, an annual IF competition with a spooky theme.

Because I’d been playing the marvelous Untitled Goose Game at the time, I wrote a parody of it set in 1800s Japan. So if that sounds like your jam, check out Untitled Nopperabou Game on itch.io for free.

(Also, because I realized I didn’t have one before, I added a page on this site which lists all my interactive fiction.)

“Music, Love, and Other Things…”

Posted on October 23, 2019November 25, 2020 by Stewart

“Music, Love, and Other Things that Bastard Cat has Peed on” is inspired by the true story of my cat, who went through a phase of peeing on damn near everything. (He did not like his litter box, apparently.) Contains broken bones, pseudo-Lovecraftiana, queer characters, and, well, what it says on the cover, really. Sorry-not-sorry.

New Stories in Translunar Travelers Lounge, Nature, and Little Blue Marble

Posted on August 23, 2019August 23, 2019 by Stewart

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.

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!

2018 in Review: My Publications and Editing

Posted on December 6, 2018December 6, 2018 by Stewart

2018 was a year!

As is traditional, I’ve collected descriptions of and links to the stories I’ve published this year below. Since a lot of my time goes into editing for sub-Q Magazine, I’ve also included a run-down of what we’ve accomplished there in 2018.

If any of the below is new to you, I hope you enjoy it! :)

Short Stories

I had four original stories published this year (as well as a smattering of reprints). Here are the originals:

“Memorial Park”

Constellary Tales, November 2018 (1000 words; content warning: child death)

A woman tries to come to terms with her young daughter’s death—and her own guilt over not being there enough throughout her life.
Read “Memorial Park” online at Constellary Tales

“Words I’ve Redefined Since Your Dinosaurs Invaded My Lunar Lair”

Flash Fiction Online, October 1, 2018 (1ooo words)

Can a Supervillain please just get a break? Doctress Doom confronts her nemesis — and calls into question the good-vs-evil nature of superheroics. Plus: Dinosaurs.
Read “Words I’ve Redefined…” at Flash Fiction Online

“Failsafes”

Nature Futures, September 5, 2018 (950 words)

A scavenger in a post-apocalyptic future finds a hidden cache with long-lost technology that just might make people’s lives better — and discovers something more important about the nature of community.
Read “Failsafes” at Nature

“The City, Like Time”

Kasma SF, April 2018 (4500 words)

Jeron returns to her home city after a lifetime of living in the wastes. Will her old friend Ameren remember the pact they made together?
Read “The City, Like Time” at Kasma SF

Editing

In addition to writing my own stories, I’m editor-in-chief of sub-Q Magazine.

sub-Q is, to my knowledge, the only magazine which focuses exclusively on interactive fiction: stories told in the browser (or with other technology) that require interaction of some kind from the reader in order to complete. We’ve published a game a month since I took over last November, and I’m very pleased with the submissions we’ve had and the games we’ve published.

If interactive fiction sounds like fun, check out the magazine at: https://sub-q.com. And if you’re an author and want to write some, check out our ongoing game jam and themed submission window, which both run until December 15th. (We’ll re-open to general submissions some time next year.)

SFWA

Beyond writing and editing, I’ve been active on a couple of SFWA committees over the past year (Game Writing and Short Fiction).

The biggest visible outcome of all this has been the announcement of the new Nebula for Game Writing, which I’m excited about!

If you’re nominating things for the Nebulas this year, don’t forget to add any games you’ve played that you thought were outstanding—and “games” means any type of game with a narrative element, whether it’s a video game, tabletop RPG, card game, or strange, unclassifiable thing. There are also no wordcount requirements: fellow Game Writing Committee members Andrew G Schneider, Monica Valentinelli, and Andrew Plotkin and I worked hard to make the new award as inclusive as possible.

If you’re a game writer or designer and have questions about the new award, or want to share your work with SFWA members, the best person to contact is the Nebula Award Commissioner, Jim Hosek, at nac@sfwa.org. You can also see the full Nebula rules on the Nebula website here: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/about-the-nebulas/nebula-rules/

One new short story, two new reprints

Posted on April 13, 2018June 25, 2018 by Stewart

I’ve been bad about updating this blog lately. Sorry!

So what’s new?

First, the fiction!

My story “The City, Like Time” has been published in Kasma SF. It’s post-apocalyptic, and features creepy water ghosts, mysterious boxes, and betrayal. Go give it a read, and check out the glorious art by José Baetas!

On the reprint front:

My Gothic tale “The Mother of Sands,” which has appeared online at a few other places, is now out in print for the first time in an anthology from Old Sins publishing called Beyond Steampunk, which features steampunk-like stories set outside of the typical era and locales. My story is set in 19th century Latvia, and features all sorts of creepiness. If you like the stylings of Gothic literature, or if you like steampunk, go check out the anthology on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble’s web store. It’s available in print and e-book form.

My wacky SF flash fiction “How to Configure Your Quantum Disambiguator” has also been reprinted, this one in podcast form at the excellent Toasted Cake. Tina really nailed the narration to this, and I love every minute of it. (About 13 minutes long, for those of you who like audio fiction!)

Second (and the reason I haven’t updated much) is that in December of last year I took over as editor-in-chief of sub-Q Magazine. I’ve been a slush reader for the magazine for several years now, and have had a story published there as well, and I’m happy to take my involvement with the magazine to the next level.

If you’re unfamiliar with sub-Q, we are a pro-rate-paying magazine for short Interactive Fiction (IF). Think Zork, Adventure, Monkey Island and other classic computer-aided fictive game/stories.

Here’s a link to the sub-Q submission guidelines.

I’d love to answer any questions about the magazine or submitting to it, if anyone has any questions!

It’s Awardsmas Eve! Here are some neat things I’ve had published in 2017

Posted on December 12, 2017June 25, 2018 by Stewart

It is—once again!—that time of year. The time of year when speculative fiction authors cower under their bedding materials for an extra hour in the mornings. When all and sundry leave offerings on their blogs, Twitter feeds, front lawns, local librarians’ inboxes, writing website author threads, gubernatorial mansion front lawns, and—yea verily—unto the surface of the moon itself. Yes, it’s the time of year when writers everywhere wake drenched in sweat, their innards burning with that mix of fear and excitement that means the awards fairy might just have visited.

That’s right, folks. It’s AWARDSMAS EVE! Uh, but at 9AM. So I guess it’s really AWARDSMAS EVE MORNING?!

Anyway, as is traditional on Awardsmas Eve, I offer up this humble list of my favourite fictive publications from calendar year 2017. I hope you find something you enjoy.

First up is the story with the shortest title I’ve ever written: “How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love,” (co-authored with Matt Dovey as Baker and Dovey). Essandra’s a simple woman. All she wants is adventure, romance, and enough piles of loot to fill an olympic-sized swimming pool. Oh, and maybe a slightly less annoying sword. Unfortunately for Essa, her adventuring companions Korgar and Elutriel decide their invasion of the Mad Wizard-King’s lair is the perfect time to compete for her affection… First published in No Shit, There I Was… from Alliteration Ink, February 2017, and reprinted in PodCast (linked above). (Also noteworthy: The story and several others in the anthology feature art by Jane Baker, my talented wife!)

In “The Thing About Heisenball,” (Daily Science Fiction, April 2017), our narrator tries to put an end to what they think is an unsuccessful relationship. But first, their soon-to-be-ex, Paulie, drags them down to the gym for a game of Heisenball. With the many-world theorem in play, nothing is off the court… This story is also an entrant in this year’s Quantum Shorts competition, if that sort of thing interests you!

“Kuriko” tells the story of a mechanical doll (からくり人形) with the unusual quality of being alive. When Kuriko’s inventor-father is killed by the greedy and ambitious lord of Tosa Province, will she ever be able to live happily again? A period piece set in the late Tokugawa bakufu. Published July 2017, in Guardbridge Books’ Tales of the Sunrise Lands. (This is one of the first stories of mine I ever really considered good enough for publication, so I’m very happy it found a good home.)

Another story with a Japanese setting is “Blood-Stained Letters Found in a Roadside Shrine on the Outskirts of Kyoto” (Syntax and Salt, September 2017). This epistolary piece explores themes of vengeance in a world peopled by bakemono like foxes and tanuki.

“Mercy at Eltshan-Time” (IGMS, December 2017) is actually not out yet! But I will update when it is. This story is a warm, uplifting holiday-themed story about far-future book curses, various mostly dead aliens, and other fun stuff. This one also features a bit of artwork by Jane, in the form of a string of alien language.

To round out this year’s Awardsmas Eve Morning offerings, a poem! “The Fragmented Poet Files a Police Report” was the first place winner (long form) in this year’s SFPA poetry contest back in late September. Go give it a read!

So. There we have it! Although 2017 has been a raging dumpster fire in many respects politically and socially, It’s been a decent enough year for me in terms of publications. In addition to the stories and poem listed above, I’ve had work published in Remixt, Galaxy’s Edge, and Kaleidotrope, and a few other places. You can see my full bibliography for the year in the “published fiction” section of my website.

Also, stay tuned for next week, when I’ll post something far more interesting than this: A list of mind-blowing stories I’ve read by other people this year.

New co-authored story: “Something on Your Mind” in Kaleidotrope (plus, win a prize!)

Posted on October 7, 2017June 25, 2018 by Stewart

A lot of writers I know have “bingo cards.” Basically, these are things that they want to accomplish in their career, like a story in Lightspeed or a Hugo nomination or something.

While I am far too disorganized to have a bingo card, one of the squares on it if I did would probably be to have been lumped into an “et al.” in a fiction story. (That means “et alia” or “and others” for those of you not used to reading academic journal articles. It’s a way to deal with situations where there are a bunch of authors and listing them all would be too time-and-space-consuming.)

So! It is with pleasure I am able to announce the crossing off of this invisible bingo square, by way of a story I co-authored with not one, not two, not three, not even four, but eight other authors!

“Something on Your Mind” by Gareth D. Jones, Stewart C. Baker, Anatoly Belilovsky, Robert Dawson, Kate Heartfield, Holly Heisey, CL Holland, Laurie Tom, and Deborah Walker (phew) is now available to read in the latest issue of Kaleidotrope. (Okay, they didn’t give me the et al. treatment in the byline, but it is in the link!)

Writing this was an interesting experience! Gareth, as primary author and creator of the Astropolis setting, had us all write a short scene from an ordinary day in someone’s life on the station. He didn’t give us any more information about the story–not how he’d connect the pieces or what the overarching plot would be.

And this is where the prize comes in. Go read the story, then come back here and leave me a comment with which of the various characters you think I’m responsible for. I’ll even give you a hint: the order of names in the byline has no bearing on the order of our sections in the story.

You have until 3pm PST next Friday, October 13th, to make your guesses. At that time, I’ll put all the correct guessers into random.org and select one lucky winner.

What will you win? A shiny copy of the September issue of Galaxy’s Edge, which includes my Lovecraftian humour story “Cut-Rate Couples Weekend at the Witch House Inne and Tavern (9 Reviews)”, as well as tales by Rachelle Harp, TR Napper, Nick DiChario and others.

New story: “Bloodstained Letters Found in a Roadside Shrine on the Outskirts of Kyoto”

Posted on September 22, 2017June 25, 2018 by Stewart

It’s story day! (Calloo, callay)

My epistolary story “Bloodstained Letters Found in a Roadside Shrine on the Outskirts of Kyoto” is out now in Syntax & Salt‘s fall issue.

This one is about tanuki, foxes, and other creatures which inhabit the world of bakemono or “changing beasts,” a specific kind of yokai who–as you might expect from their name–can transform.

The story’s a little bloody, in case the title doesn’t make that obvious. Thanks to my first readers at Codex, and Taka Okubo, for their feedback on earlier versions of the story!

If you’d like to learn more about yokai and bakemono, yokai.com is far and away the most comprehensive English-language resource available. Go check them out!

Out now in Galaxy’s Edge: Cut-Rate Couples Weekend at the Witch House Inne and Tavern (9 Reviews)

Posted on September 5, 2017June 25, 2018 by Stewart

What do you get when you cross Pokémon Go, witchcraft, cheap dates, Groupon, and eldritch horrors from beyond the fabric of reality as we know it?

Something like my latest story, “Cut-Rate Couples Weekend at the Witch House Inne and Tavern (9 Reviews),” which you can read right now in issue 28 of Galaxy’s Edge magazine, along with stories by Rachelle Harp, Kevin J. Anderson, and other fine authors.

Go check it out!

Free to read in IGMS: The View from Driftwise Spindle

Posted on June 29, 2017June 25, 2018 by Stewart

For a limited time, my science fiction story “The View from Driftwise Spindle” from last July’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, is free to read on the IGMS website. The story is about space elevators and the end of the world (and family, and belonging, and loss, and responsibility, and a myriad of other things).

Here’s the opening paragraph:

The plural for meeting, thought Gayatri Anwar, ought to be headache. And even for a surface stint, where meetings always played a heavy role, she’d had a lot of headaches since the Martian Disaster. The announcement that a rogue planetoid had struck their sister planet, and that meteor-sized pieces of ejecta would crash into Earth in five months’ time, had everyone scrambling to get off-planet. Driftwise, as the only spindle with no ties or obligations to a particular nation, seemed to be bearing the brunt of the attention.

Go give it a read!

“The View from Driftwise Spindle,” by Stewart C Baker