Category: fantasy

2019 original fiction publications

Posted on 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”

punk rock future

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”

translunar travelers lounge

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”

five minutes at hotel stormcove

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.)

2018 in Review: My Publications and Editing

Posted on 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/

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

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

Posted on 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!

Reprint: Proceedings from the First and Only Sixteenth Annual One-Woman Symposium on Time Manipulation

Posted on by Stewart

My weird and somewhat surreal flash fiction piece, “Proceedings from the First and Only Sixteenth Annual One-Woman Symposium on Time Manipulation,” is up today as a reprint at Flash Fiction Online!

This story first appeared late last year in Time Travel Tales, which you can buy on Amazon as an e-book or in print. The anthology has a bunch of excellent stories by other authors as well as mine, so if you like time travel, go check that out as well!

And—speaking of anthologies—a reminder that my historical fantasy story “Kuriko” is out now in Guardbridge Books’s Tales of the Sunrise Lands, and available on Amazon as well as through the Guardbridge Books website.

Two new flash fiction pieces in Remixt Magazine, volume 2

Posted on by Stewart

I have two original flash fiction pieces out in two separate issues of the second volume of Remixt, out yesterday!

Remixt, if you’re not familiar with it, is an experiment in publishing spearheaded by Julia Rios. Each release of the magazine pits 5+ editors against the same slush pile, and so there’s the possibility of the same piece being selected by different editors, or of each simultaneously-released issue being completely unique. You can read more about the process in Julia’s editorial here.

I sent two different pieces of flash their way back in March, and was fortunate enough to have each one appeal to one of the volume 2 editors. Huzzah!

Volume 2, Issue 3 features my story “Doge Coefficient,” a vaguely SFnal post-apocalyptic tale where the end came not in the form of zombies or plague but in sudden social collapse caused by Internet-driven language change. It’s also about learning to accept the past, and figuring out how to move forward.

Volume 2, Issue 4 features my story “What She Left Behind,” a slipstreamy kind of fantasy story which is kind of part Ovidian transformation story, part Southern Reach style weird, and part uh… learning-to-accept-the-past-and-figuring-out-how-to-move-forward. Which I guess was kind of a theme for me in these two stories for some reason.

Anyway. Go give ’em a read and check out the other fine stories featured in the various issues of Remixt, volume 2!

April/May updates: An award shortlist, a contest win, and a few new publications

Posted on by Stewart

I have been very bad about updating this blog lately. Gah! So, here’s April/May.

April

I had a new piece of flash fiction out in Daily Science Fiction on April 4th titled “Heisenball.” The story explores the many world theorem and takes a look at what we blame ourselves and others for, and what we do when we learn how else things might have turned out. Go give it a read! “Heisenball” by Stewart C Baker

Other exciting April news was the announcement that Futures story “Love and Relativity” was selected as one of seven finalists in my Naturethe 2016-2017 Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing, in such luminous company as Alastair Reynolds, Aliette de Bodard, David D. Levine, and Alex Shvartsman. (And that’s just in the short story category. Neal Stephenson? Cixin Liu? AAAAAAAH!)

You can read “Love and Relativity” at Nature Futures, or listen to it in audio form at Audible, courtesy of its being reprinted in Flash Fiction Online.

Also in April, I sold a Little Mermaid retelling to an anthology of fairy tales by Fantasia Divinity. Check it out on Amazon in ebook and paperback.

And the gloriously-titled story I co-wrote with Matt Dovey, “How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love,” was released in audio form at Podcastle. If you like absurd, D&D-gone-wrong style misadventures, Listen/read online“>give it a listen! (As a bonus, you can also view the art my wife Jane drew for the story in its original publication in No Shit from Alliteration Ink. Art makes everything better! If you’d like to see her other three illustrations, you’ll have to buy the anthology.)

May

In early May, my original story “The Monsters Your Mother Still Asks About” was published in Great Jones Street. This one is a darkly humorous urban fantasy romance, complete with a ridiculous vampire, an overbearing mother who may or may not be acquainted with brooms, and–just maybe–a chance at love or something like it.

Great Jones Street also published two reprints from me: “Fugue in a Minor Key,” originally from Galaxy’s Edge, and “Images Across a Shattered Sea,” my Writers of the Future winner. “Fugue in a Minor Key” is no longer available online elsewhere, so I’m especially glad to get that one some more eyeballs.

And last, but certainly not least, just a few days ago I learned that my story “At the Edge of a Human Path” took first prize in the annual Friends of the Merril contest. The story is a retelling of a Medieval English tale, “The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle,” only set in Yamato Japan. Features fox-women, besotted lords, and devious backstabbery.

Friends of the Merril is a pay-to-enter contest, which I usually avoid, but I make an exception for this one because they use the proceeds to support a library collection of speculative fiction. Yay libraries! (And, obviously, I am very glad that I made that exception, this year!)

Phew. That seems like a lot of stuff. What will June hold? I sold two stories to Remixt, but am not sure when that comes out, and have a few other forthcoming releases, as well.

(Also, if you’re into haiku, you should go read the June issue of The Heron’s Nest. I’m the web editor, and also get to sometimes write the essay for the poem that gets the most editorial votes. This time I was privileged enough to be the one writing about an incredible haiku from Anthony Itopa Obaro of Nigeria.)

New story, “Five Recipes You Can’t Live Without” now up at Spirit’s Tincture

Posted on by Stewart

My flash fiction story disguised as a series of magical cupcake recipes, “Five Recipes You Can’t Live Without” is now available to read in the inaugural issue of Spirit’s Tincture magazine.

To give you a taste (get it?) that will only serve to increase your appetite (get it?!), here is a sample-sized serving (okay, I’ll stop) made up of the opening lines:

One — Vanilla-Almond and Anise Cupcakes

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F
  2. With your dead sister’s image foremost in your mind, chant an awakening spell and light a stick of absinthe-infused sandalwood afire

The story was a runner-up in their flash fiction contest, and the issue also has stories by excellent writers like Laurence Brothers, Darcie Little Badger (whose story won the contest!), Spencer Ellsworth, José Iriarte, and more!

The issue’s free to read online (albeit in one of those funky page-flipping things), and you can also buy a print version if you’re into that sort of thing. Go and check it out!

Here’s the online version:

(PS: Peltandra Sagittifolia and snakeroot are kind of toxic, so do me a favour and don’t try to reproduce those recipes in your kitchen!)

Ritual Chant of Banishment Recited by Esma de la Tour, Tenth Degree Sorceress and Inveterate Procrastinator (“last words” series)

Posted on by Stewart

From last week’s unrelenting bleakness, let’s move on to something silly.

It was Oscar Wilde (or perhaps his goatee-wearing evil twin from one of the mirror dimensions) who penned the words “I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do the day after.” Words to live by, my friends! Words to live by.

Ritual Chant of Banishment Recited by Esma de la Tour, Tenth Degree Sorceress and Inveterate Procrastinator, Upon Being Asked by Her Teacher to Disinvoke the Ninety-Legged Demon of Sqwar, Which He had Inadvertently Summoned Whilst Bathing

by Stewart C Baker

I haven’t memorized that yet!

Words to live by indeed. He says, as he comes up with another piece of microfiction the night before his self-imposed deadline…

Last Words of the Immortal (“Last Words” Series) + some shameless plugs

Posted on by Stewart

Immortality’s a funny thing.

There’s a long fictional tradition, as TV Tropes and Wikipedia make abundantly clear, of playing with the idea, inverting and subverting it. For instance, we have “complete immortality” (where you can’t be killed OR die) versus just the regular kind (where natural causes won’t off you, but injuries still can).

Tolkien’s elves, for instance, are regular immortal. So are most kinds of fictional vampire. Beasties like the Lernean Hydra dispatched by Hercules and his nephew Iolaus, on the other hand, are essentially unkillable and can only be inconvenienced to a greater or lesser degree by (e.g.) lighting them on fire, killing most of their mortal heads, and burying their immortal head under a huge boulder at the roadside because your name is Hercules and you’re an asshole like that.

Uh. Anyway.

I, too, like to play with the idea of immortality!

Last Words of the Immortal

by Stewart C Baker

Finally…!

Which I guess I kind of spoiled with that introduction but OH WELL, ONWARDS.

To some shameless plugs!

Shameless plug number one is that a story co-written by fellow Writers of the Future winner Matt Dovey and myself is in the currently-Kickstarting anthology “No Shit, There I Was.” Our tale is a glorious one of peril, fantastical hilarity, a magical sword welded by a kick-ass heroine who doesn’t take crap from anybody (except when she has to), true love, a soul-sucking evil wizard, necromantic basement weasels, and baby oil. Uh, but not necessarily in that order.

PLUS I MEAN JUST LOOK AT THIS COVER:
No Shit, There I Was: An Anthology of Improbable Tales edited by AlexAcks
IS IT NOT GLORIOUS? You know you want that on your bookshelf.

Head on over to the Kickstarter! If you order a copy, lemme know in the comments and I’ll legit write you a 5-word story on a topic of your choice, following the same rules I follow for these “Last Words” stories, and post it on my blog (if you want) for all to be jealous over.

Shameless plug number two is that you can pre-order the Writers of the Future anthology on Amazon or at your fine book retailer of choice. More details about the anthology and where to order it are available atWotF32.com. (We’re still hoping to get electronic sampler copies of the anthology, so stay tuned for that…)