Tag: short story

Short Stories and Games from 2022: My Latest Publications!

Posted on by Stewart

2022 has been a weird year, writing-wise. I’ve spent nearly all my writing energy on a forthcoming comedy/fantasy/baking/isekai/eldritch-horror game co-written with James Beamon. (Look for that from Choice of Games in 2023, by the way!)

That and some freelance nonfiction accounts for nearly all of my written output this year, so it’s been easy to feel like I haven’t done anything. It’s a little surprising, then, to look through what I had published this year!

I had seven original short stories and one game released this year, as well as the first few chapters of a second game.

Here’s a brief run down, with links when available!

2022 Short Stories

“The Spread of Space and Endless Devastation” (Lightspeed, December)

“The Spread of Space and Endless Devastation” – Lightspeed, December, 2022

A 1200-word story about time loops, ships with feelings, found family / parenting vibes, and learning to let go even when it’s really hard.

No content notes as such but it has some heavy emotional notes at the end.

“The Labyrinth’s Daughter” (Corvid Queen, November)

“The Labyrinth’s Daughter” – Corvid Queen, November 28 2022

The daughter of the Minotaur lives on. Will she ever step out of his shadow—or the labyrinth? A fantasy story of roughly 1000 words inspired by the art of Leonora Carrington and the stories of Jorge Luis Borges.

(Content notes: violence, emotional abuse)

“Veracity’s Find” (Wizards in Space, November)

“Veracity’s Find” – Wizards in Space 8, November 2022

A woman living on board a world-spanning orbital station goes on a treasure hunt to get over a break-up. Will what she finds there help her or make her feel worse? More importantly, will Station ever keep its weird ideas to itself? A science fiction story of around 1600 words.

(Content notes: low self-esteem)

“What Not to Do When You’re Polymorphed and Stuck in a Time Loop” (The Sprawl, October)

“What Not to Do When You’re Polymorphed and Stuck in a Time Loop” – The Sprawl Mag, October 16, 2022

What do you get when you drink a polymorph potion and suck the essence out of powerful mages in a desperate attempt to get out of a time loop?

It sounds like the start of a highly specific and very strange joke, but it’s also the concept behind this weird little genre-bender of 750 words.

“The Nature of Stones” (Prismatic Dreams, June)

“The Nature of Stones” – Prismatic Dreams, All Worlds Wayfarer, June 2022

A quiet science fantasy story of 3000 words about childbirth, relationship conflicts, and negative self-talk, set on a planet where there’s no concept of gender and giant boulders drift slowly down from space to crash in the ocean.

(Content notes: brief suicidal ideation)

“The Calligrapher’s Granddaughter” (Haven Speculative, May)

“The Calligrapher’s Granddaughter” – Haven Speculative, May 2022

Set in 1800s Edo (now Tokyo), Japan, this story has snooty samurai, magical calligraphy, and a found family theme.

(Content notes: terminal illness, runaway child, threat of harm to child)

“A Difference of Opinion” (Kaleidotrope, April)

“A Difference of Opinion” – Kaleidotrope, April 2022

This far-future space opera features AI, drones, golden retrievers, and sly (or not so sly) references to the work of Ursula Le Guin and Iain M. Banks. Approximately 4100 words.

(Content notes: accidental poisoning… sort of)

2022 Reprints

I had three stories reprinted this year as well, one as an audio reprint:

2022 Games

“Trick or Treat or Trick or Treat or Trick” (Ectocomp, October)

(Created using “halloween candy” by Terren under a CC-BY license.)

It’s your first year trick or treating alone. Will it be your last?

Trick or Treat or Trick or Treat or Trick is a parser game about time loops and trick or treating, written for Ectocomp 2022 in October. It’s set in the 90s, hence the eye-watering cover art.

The game scored dead last, probably because it was my first time writing anything in Inform (the game engine I used) and I decided that it wouldn’t be challenging enough without introducing weird time loop mechanics. For some reason?!

I’ve fixed the (many!) bugs that were present in the competition release and introduced a hint system, which I hope makes this more entertaining to play. If you enjoy interactive fiction, or are curious what exactly it is, check it out!

“Library of Worlds” (Storyloom, Ongoing)

illustration of a person's head. the top part of the head is replaced with a nebula of stars, and library books flutter across their face

A demon lord in the library?!

Inspired by my love for isekai anime and my library career (sort of, anyway!), “Library of Worlds” is a cozy reverse isekai fantasy visual novel. That’s a lot of adjectives — basically, it’s a game where you talk to various characters from a fantasy world have been reborn in our own, but without the seriously high stakes and tension that are common to certain types of fantasy stories.

The first six chapters are now available to play, and I anticipate publishing another five each in January and February, bringing the story to its completion.

Also, check out that gorgeous cover the Storyloom art team put together for me. Wow!

The Storyloom site is in beta and all games are currently free to play, but getting to a specific title is a little tricky still. If you want to try this one out, I recommend clicking the link, signing up for an account, and then coming back here and clicking the link again.

2022 Submission Statistics

Seven stories and three reprints published in one year sounds like a lot.

Wow, I must be so successful! The sting of rejection banished from my writing practice for good!

Well, not so much.

My secret (it’s not very secret) is that I write a lot of very short fiction and I make a lot of submissions. That means I net more accepted stories than I would if I rarely sent things out, but it also means I get a heck of a lot of rejections.

Here are this years stats:

  • Stories Started: 6 (all flash)
  • Stories Finished: 3 (mostly flash)
  • Words Written: ~150,000 (almost all in the choicescript game)
  • Submissions: 220
  • Acceptances: 15 (some from 2021 submissions, some for things that will come out in 2023 — or beyond)
  • Rejections: 140 (9 personal, the rest forms)
  • Pending: 42 (as of late December when I’m writing this post — most will likely be rejections)

According to Duotrope, which I use to track my submissions, my acceptance ratio for the year is just under 9%. (Duotrope doesn’t have every single one of my submissions, which is why the numbers above don’t add up properly, so my acceptance ratio is probably lower in reality.)

That’s actually about where it’s been since 2019, and my submission numbers per year are about the same too. To put things into perspective, this means if I’d only submitted the seven stories I had accepted, I wouldn’t have gotten any acceptances. (Yes, I know that’s not how statistics work.)

For most people, 217 submissions in a year is kind of bonkers, although I definitely know authors who submit more stories and poems each year! I’ve set myself a goal of 15 submissions a month since about 2020. For me, that’s a relatively easy task because:

  1. I write primarily flash fiction and short stories that are on the shorter side.
  2. I have a pretty decent stable of published short stories built up from my ~10 years of submitting (Just under 70 stories published as of December 2022) so I can send out lots of reprints.

If you’re a writer yourself, I’d love to hear from you about short stories you had published this year!

New Story: “Maricourt’s Waters, Quiet and Deep” in No Police = Know Future

Posted on by Stewart

I’m thrilled to announce that I have a new story out!

“Maricourt’s Waters, Quiet and Deep” takes place on a terraformed Mars where different ideas of justice have taken hold in different, mostly independent city-states.

Take Aala, for example. They’ve scratched out a living for themself as a petty thief and pickpocket in the glittering, turbulent spray cast up by the endless waterfalls of Marineris City, where profit is king and men like Vasilis are its loyal, vicious servants. Kirsi, on the other hand, comes from Maricourt, where community, equity and compassion hold sway.

A rocket ship statue stands before some buildings and a blue sky

The most Aala ever hoped for in Marineris was to slip through the cracks, to avoid Vasilis’s wrath and out of the local law enforcement’s damp and dreadful holding cells. But all that’s all behind them, now, as they travel to Maricourt with Kirsi–who, for some reason, doesn’t think they’re scum and wants to spend actual time with them.

Maricourt and Kirsi between them give Aala more hope than they dare to admit, but theft is the only way they know how to survive. Will a change in surroundings lead to a happy ending, or will a slip back into old habits ruin their run in Maricourt before they ever had a chance to start?

If you want to find out, you’ll have to read “Maricourt’s Waters, Quiet and Deep,” out now in No Police = Know Future, edited by James Beamon and available here from Experimenter Publishing.

No Police = Know Future

“What does a future without police look like?”

That’s the central question asked by the No Police = Know Future anthology, which came out in mid-December from Experimenter Press, the publishers of Amazing Stories Magazine. With stories from me and seven other authors, including Holly Schofield, Lettie Prell, Jared Oliver Adams, and Anatoly Belilovsky, the anthology presents some possible answers.

Also, if you’re reading this before December 27th (as opposed to in the distant future) you can also attend an online launch party for the book!

Join editor James Beamon and some of the authors (including me) December 27th, 2020, at 1pm Eastern Time to chat about the book, the future of policing, and the meaning of “justice.” Check the details here on the Amazing Stories website for information on how to attend.

“Maricourt’s Waters, Quiet and Deep”

At the core of my story in the anthology is the concept of restorative justice.

What is restorative justice? According to the Centre for Justice & Reconciliation (CJR), it’s justice that “views crime as more than breaking the law – it also causes harm to people, relationships, and the community.”

This seems pretty obvious, but where restorative justice often surprises people is that it considers the reintegration of offenders and victims as part of its concept of “justice.”

That’s not to say that victims are less important than offenders. Rather:

Offenders also face stigmatization. Since crime causes fear in the community, offenders become vilified in the eyes of society. Incarceration separates them from their families and communities. Upon release, offenders frequently lack stable support structures, and even start-up money for food and clothes, housing, transportation, and other parts of a healthy productive life. At the same time, offenders face discrimination in their attempts to become productive citizens.

Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, “Reintegration“

So what does restorative justice look like in real life? That’s a tricky question, and its worth noting that there are many disagreements not only on how to implement it, but what it even is and whether it might (intentionally or otherwise) still cause harm to offenders.

The central idea, though, is one of respect. Respect for victims and respect for offenders, giving the former restitution while still allowing—and encouraging—forgiveness for the latter so they can become integrated into society, less likely to offend again and less likely to need to. Restorative justice is about healing and support, not punishment and submission.

Would it be a perfect system?

No, of course not. No system is perfect.

But consider the following:

  1. There are well-documented racial inequities caused by longterm socioeconomic trends that the US criminal justice system ignores
  2. Imprisonment and similar punishments are likely to increase reoffending rather than reducing crime over the long term

Given the above (not to mention all the other things wrong with criminal justice in the USA today), why not try a system that doesn’t treat every single person who commits a crime as a malicious actor who needs to be taught a lesson? A system that acts from a humane, compassionate impulse rather than a neurotic, rules-obsessed, inhumane one? A system where the main idea is to actually help people?

If these questions intrigue you, or if you’ve just never thought about it before, I’d encourage you to read up on restorative justice at the links above. (Of course, you can also see how I approach it in my story!)

But what about Mars?

An artist's conception of a terraformed Mars (Maricourt Crater not pictured)
Look closely: that’s Mars, not Earth!
Image credit: Daein Ballard. Used under a CC-By-SA license.

“Maricourt’s Waters, Quiet and Deep” is set on a terraformed Mars, where water is plentiful on the surface — as you might have guessed from the title.

The story opens as Aala and Kirsi take a monorail over a lake at the center of Maricourt Crater, and the metaphor of water as peace and justice runs throughout the story.

Marineris City, where profit is king? Turbulent waterfalls that fall ever downward. Maricourt? A tranquil lake which glitters in the sun. (Okay, so it’s not a very subtle metaphor.)

Mars has historically been associated with water in the form of canals, which don’t make an appearance in my story in particular (a missed opportunity, now that I think about it!). And of course, water development and management would be essential on any human-livable Mars.

All of which is to say: if you’re just here for “future terraformed Mars,” I’ve got you covered there with this story, too.

New Original Fiction: May & June Update

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It’s been a while since I last updated, but I have a few new publications to announce!

First, a bittersweet story about long-term care, memory loss, and mother-daughter relationships.

In “Against the Dying of the Light,” from Flash Fiction Online’s May 2020 issue, a woman must balance caring for her mother with reporting on a cutting-edge surgery that’s supposed to be nearly miraculous. But as the saying goes, if something seems too good to be true…

Read “Against the Dying of the Light” at Flash Fiction Online here! You can also support the publisher by purchasing a copy of the issue on Amazon (it’s only $1!).

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Next up is “At the Edge of a Human Path,” a story that features:

  • Ancient kami!
  • Shapeshifting foxes!
  • Politics, power, and greed!
  • A strange and hopefully compelling mashup of 6th-century Japan with the comedic middle English ballad The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle!

All this and more can be found in my 5000 word fantasy story “At the Edge of a Human Path,” out now in 87 Bedford’s Historic Fantasy Anthology, which published in June, 2020. You can purchase a copy of the anthology direct from the publisher at https://87bedford.com/2020/05/25/historic-fantasy-anthology/ for the low price of $5.

If you want to read just my story you can read it here.

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And last, but not least, a cutemeet set against the end of the world!

Wait, maybe an exclamation mark sets the tone wrong for that one…

In any case, my story “Scenes from the End of a World” is up in the June 2020 issue of All Worlds Wayfarer. Features non-binary characters, a budding romance, and… well… what it says on the cover.

You can read “Scenes from the End of a World” online at All Worlds Wayfarer and support the publisher by buying a copy of the issue in which it apperas at Amazon for $2.99.

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What else have I been up to?

Right now I’m doing the Clarion West Writeathon, which is always fun.

In May/June, I wrote the first draft of a 30,000 word novella looking at the Akō Incident, more commonly known in English as the tale of the 47 rōnin. My take on the story focuses on the trials of Sengoku Hisanao, one of the shogun’s chief castle inspectors and the person in charge of the official investigation and response to the rōnin attack on Kira Yoshinaka. It also features (of course) telepathic extraterrestrials who exist as beings of pure thought.

I’m planning to shop it around when I’ve made a few more revisions, so hopefully will have news to share about it in the future!

I did finally finish up a revised draft of the novel I’ve been working on as well, and am going to dive back into that soon now that I have some beta reader feedback to look at about what needs fixing.

One new short story, two new reprints

Posted on 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 #FridayReads! Here’s what I’ve been reading this week.

Posted on by Stewart

Every week on Twitter, Shimmer Magazine asks people what they’ve been reading. It’s a great way to find new novels and stories that people are excited about–or figure out what might not suit your tastes.

Here, then, are a few things I’ve read this week!

Short Stories

“Hare’s Breath” by Maria Haskins (Shimmer, September 2017)- A beautiful, heart-aching story of loss, love, and midsummer magic of a very Swedish sort. (Note: depictions of abuse.)

“The Lies I’ve Told to Keep You Safe” by Matt Dovey (Daily Science Fiction, October 19th, 2017) – This very short story about an alien takeover of Earth packs a punch that goes far beyond its wordcount.

Novellas/Novels

Acadie by Dave Hutchinson (Tor.com, September 5, 2017) – An unwilling president, an illicit space colony, and genetic alteration–what’s not to love? Mostly: the ending, which read to me like the author just stopped writing the novel he’d started and put on a twist ending a quarter of the way through, and called the result a novella. I was particularly disappointed because the twist (which appeared more or less entirely unforeshadowed on the last two pages of the novella!) seemed to me to rub in my face everything I’d enjoyed about the story to that point. And, okay, I should have figured something was up since the thing’s called Acadie and Arcadia is supposed to be an unattainable paradise that can never be regained. But ugggggh. Very disappointed in this one–if you pick it up, you’ll probably be happier if you just stop when the Bureau ship appears in-system and make up your own ending. (Although the twist ending seems to have worked really well for some people, so what do I know?)

Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnoly (Tor, February 2017) – The elevator pitch for this book is “A double-agent sacrifices all his ideals in order to save his smuggler lover before a government coup takes over their decadent city,” which sounds fantastic to me. I really wanted to love this one, but just couldn’t stick with it past the second chapter. I enjoyed the character interactions in the sections of it I did read, but the style just was not my cup of tea, and it was all a little too lushly written for me to get into. (The slang of the world, in particular, felt too self-consciously faux-1920s for my taste.) Give this one a try if “lushly written” 1920s-style intrigue is your thing, though!

Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys (Tor.com, April 2017) – Fantastically clever Lovecraft subversion. Aphra Marsh is a Deep One and a woman–and it’s not always clear which of those things the powerful men who want to stop her find the most distasteful. I enjoyed every word of this one! (And, as a bonus, you can read the first few chapters, as well as a novelette that takes place before the events of the novel, for free online at Tor.com.)

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

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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”

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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!

Ten reprints now available at Curious Fictions

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As an author, it can sometimes be challenging to find good homes for reprints of stories I’ve had published in magazines. And, as a reader, I know it’s difficult to hunt down more stories by authors I like in one central location.

With all this in mind, I’m please to report that fellow writer Tanya Breshears has created a new website just for reprints, called Curious Fictions.

Curious Fictions provides an attractive home for multiple reprints, making it easy for me to manage my previously published stories and for readers to find them (and those of great writers like Helena Bell, Matt Dovey, Laura Pearlman, Aidan Doyle, and Effie Seiberg–with more sure to come!).

As a reader, you’re given a preview of each story, with the option to pay whatever you feel is appropriate for the rest (currently, you can choose to pay anywhere between $1 and $10 USD). Payments are accepted from anywhere in the world with a valid credit card. There are no ads (glory of glories!) and 75% of each payment goes to the author of the purchased story.

At the moment, you can only browse by genre and author name, but I’ve heard through the grapevine that there are plans for many other ways to discover and enjoy great fiction from your favourite authors, as well as those who are new to you.

Here are brief summaries of the ten stories I’ve posted to the site, with links to read them:

Love and Relativity – When her husband disappears aboard an experimental starship, Indira researches what went wrong. But the answers don’t always lie on the pages of a book… This story first appeared in Nature Physics, and has since been translated into several languages. It’s currently a finalist for the 2016-2017 Canopus Awards for Excellence in Interstellar Writing.

Little More than Shadows – You’ve always been able to make your dreams take form. You’ve always been able to shape the world around you. To shift it. Now, at the end of everything, what will you do…? This story first appeared in Daily Science Fiction.

Oubliette – The surgery is supposed to take away stress and leave Robert feeling happy, successful, and at peace with himself. But something goes wrong… This story first appeared in Flash Fiction Online.

How to Configure your Quantum Disabiguator – Read these instructions carefully—they may just save your life. (Or you can just forget about it all and push the red button…) First appeared in Nature Futures.

Concerning Your Recent Creation of Horse-Things on the Next Planet Over – Dr Higgelbottem has a bone to pick with the Ancient Academy of the Right Honourable Uplifters, and she wants them to know exactly what she thinks… First appeared in Flash Fiction Online.

Elements of a Successful Exit Broadcast – Stay calm. Stay focused. Remember who you’re speaking to, and why… First appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination.

The View from Driftwise Spindle – Gayatri and Ang are different in a lot of ways, but what they want is the same: the best deal for Driftwise Spindle, and for as many people as possible to survive the end of the world… This story was a finalist for the Baen Memorial SF award in 2014. It was first published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Fugue in a Minor Key – All Katja wants is to see her child again, her husband. Get back to her career as a concert pianist. But the two techs sitting across from her insist that none of that is real. That she’s just awoken from an immersive simulation, and only eight minutes have passed… This story was first published in Galaxy’s Edge.

Just Another Night at the Abandoned Draft Bar and Grill – All Alex wants is stop being murdered, chopped up, and hidden in the fridge to serve as her boyfriend’s backstory. So when Francois, who comes from an Afro-futurist science fiction story, tells her of his plan to change their author’s mindset, she readily agrees. What could possibly go wrong…? This story was first published in Galaxy’s Edge.

The Thing about Heisenball – The narrator gets a crash course in Heisenball, a game that melds squash with quantum physics. And, most importantly of all, it’s a game where losing doesn’t matter. First published in Daily Science Fiction.

If you head over to Curious Fictions to check these out, be sure to browse around the site and see what else is on offer!

Two of my favourites are Helena Bell’s “Robot” and Laura Pearlman’s uproarious “I AM GRAALNAK OF THE VROON EMPIRE, DESTROYER OF GALAXIES, SUPREME OVERLORD OF THE PLANET EARTH. ASK ME ANYTHING” (which, really, is better suited to headline capslock than any other title I can think of).

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

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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!

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.)