Remember that silly story I wrote a year ago, about math and waffles and an alien invasion, only it’s really about choosing your family and loving people for who they are? (And waffles.) It’s back! BuzzyMag has reprinted it and given it oh gosh, the cutest little illustration ever.
So go read it! And eat waffles! Raise a toast to the Blender, may he rest in peace.
Oh and by the way, don’t forget I wrote a bunch of stuff last year that’s eligible for awards!
They Tell Me There Will Be No Pain is now available online at Lightspeed. (You should subscribe to Lightspeed anyway, you know, even though you can read the story for free now.) You should go read it, because it’s quite literally the best thing I’ve written to date and is incredibly important to me as a story. It is about lies, and frankly, the fact that PTSD kills.
Oh yeah. And the money from it went to UNICEF UK. If you think it’s a good story and have the spare money, you should subscribe to Lightspeed and/or donate to UNICEF. Hell, if you hate the story and think I’m a fucking hack, you should do one or both of those things anyway.
Enjoy, and please tell your friends! AAAA THIS IS SO EXCITING!!!
It is 11:37 in the dark of night. The hour of yeasting. Sian’s sprawled across her brand new reclining sofa, only just bought from Sofa Mart by way of a downright predatory loan because she wanted to own leather furniture for once in her goddamn life and had already decided to be buried with it. Stainmaster, they told her. Tough enough to withstand a pack of great danes or half a day with a rambunctious toddler.
But they didn’t say jack shit about evil fairies. She’s just finished part one of a two-parter for Criminal Minds and is eating hummus directly from the plastic container with a spoon because after your fourth twelve hour shift in a row while holiday music does an endless loop and summons forth the devil in the automotive aisle at Target, going to the grocery store sounds about as appealing as doing lines of ground glass off the floor of a truck stop bathroom.
Sian knows she’s fucked the minute she sees the sparkly puffs of flour out of the corner of her eye, and catches the smells the sweet scent of baking bread mixing unappetizingly with the acrid stench of scorching leather. “Oh, come on.”
I have two new short stories out, because I am living the dream!
First off, go to Scigentasy and read What Purpose a Heart. Because it is painfully obvious that your morning doesn’t contain nearly enough space opera, ship to ship battles, or lesbians. I’m even more excited because the artwork Scigentasy put with this story is absolutely gorgeous and perfect in every way. So go! Read it! Why haven’t you read it yet?
Also, the second piece of flash I’ve ever managed to write, List of Items Found in Valise on Welby Crescent is out in Shimmer #19. This story has had three different incarnations and gone through over 10 drafts, which is pretty impressive (or potentially depressing) considering it’s less than 500 words long. But it’s an odd little story I wanted to see if I could tell in a strange way, and I’m really pleased with it. The story will be available online in June, but I think you definitely want to read it so much right now that you should buy a copy of Shimmer #19. And as a bonus you’ll get some other awesome fiction too.
Patricia Ash at GearHearts has reviewed The Ugly Tin Orrery and gave it 4/5 gears. If you’ve been missing out on pirates and murder and steam engines designed to jump the tracks, you should really remedy that. Just sayin.
Other exciting things are in the works, which has involved me being in editing hell for the last two weeks. Super exciting things. Unfortunately if I told you, a squadron of ninja would then have to show up at your house and kill you to preserve my honor, so it’s probably for the best that I’m just going to be mysterious and annoying about it.
I have a new story out today from Crossed Genres: The Heart-Beat Escapement
Please read and enjoy!
This story is one that went through a lot of drafts–nine in total. It started out about 1500 words longer than it is now.
Something about the way Greensmith says but grates. “I already know that,” Owen snaps. The baby, abandoned in an alleyway and dying; the doctor and the engineer who found him and replaced his malformed heart with one crafted of delicate gears. It was his favorite fairy tale, growing up.
Most of those 1500 words I ended up cutting out of the story were the fairy tale Owen refers to here. Bits of it were interspersed throughout the story to act as section breaks. It ultimately didn’t work right and slowed the story down way too much, which is why I cut it, but I’m still pretty fond of those words. So I thought I’d share those sections (plus a bit extra to make them more coherent) with you as a little bonus–Owen’s bedtime story.
On with the show!
#SFWApro
I know some people were wondering about the digital download for Waylines #4, which contains my story Samara and a little interview with me. Wonder no more! The digital download went live this morning and you can grab it at the Waylines website. There is also some additional content in the download that wasn’t in the original issue.
The digital download is free. As always, I encourage you to consider donating to the magazine if you like what they’re giving away. (I’m looking at it right now-it’s a nice pdf.)
I’m now in the thick of editing Blood in Elk Creek, by the way. I’m really pleased with how this one is turning out. (Been wondering about the Infected?) A little over a month until it will be available!
Man, I have just fallen in love with writing novellas. Long enough to have some real meat to them, but still short enough that writing then doesn’t feel like a marathon.
Surprise! I have a new short story out. This was actually a bit of a surprise to me, since while the editors had told me Issue #4 was going to go live at the beginning of the month, I somehow didn’t make the connection that my story would be in it. Surprise! Happy surprise.
To read the story, go to Waylines and look at the Issue #4 table of contents.
I’m super excited. I love the illustration they put with the story! And here’s how it starts out…
Dearest Chandra:I was the first to wake, one month out from our new home to be and twenty-four hours before everyone else. The bulk of the deceleration is already done; we’re at a bit less than normal Earth gravity now. Remember those little sleeper jaunts we used to do out to Io? It’s nothing like that, Chandra. I feel like the inside of my head’s been scrubbed with a wire brush, sinuses desiccated and tongue glued in place. I don’t think any language has suitable words for how I feel.
So, this is entirely @mbennardo’s fault. LET IT BE KNOWN.
On a hill overlooking the Camsted valley stands a man, six feet tall, broad-shouldered, hands with short, stubby fingers and square palms. Earth hands, his Mam had called them. Stone hands they also got called, by anyone unlucky enough to mistake soft-spoken for weak after a night of drinking.
Utar the Radish Farmer leans on his hoe, watching black clouds of crows swirl above the valley. He leans back his head and whistles piercingly through the generous gap between his front teeth, a special combination of tones and trills that some might call magic, but he just calls sense.
One black dot breaks away from the cloud and spirals through the air toward him. Utar waits patiently, squinting against the cheery yellow sunlight of the afternoon. A few minutes later, a crow lands on the handle in a flurry of wings, balanced on one foot. Utar tilts his head back, squints against the feathers until she’s gotten settled.
He knows this crow. She has a set of golden dots on top of her head, like the beauty marks of a lady. They’ve talked before. “Good day, Lady Crow.” He’s also heard this called magic, being able to talk to birds. Seems like more good sense to him.
She clacks her beak. “Very good for us, Utar.”
Utar tilts his chin toward the valley. “There a battle on?”
“Have you ever known anything else to draw us in such numbers?”
“Nay, ’tis true. What’s the chance the lines might move this way a mite more?”
She inspects him with one black, sparkling eye. “There’s a soothsayer on the side of the man in red. We could trick him in to it easily enough.” Then she turns her head to inspect him with the other eye. “For the normal price.”
Utar nods slowly. “Agreed.” Man in red probably means the Duke; he’s always sounded like the superstitious sort.
The crow takes off and Utar heads back down the hills of his radish farm. “Mattie,” he calls to his wife, “get the girls. Battle’ll be coming this way soon.”
Mattie throws down the lump of dough she’s been working and gives him an annoyed look. “I’m in the middle of baking.”
“The high and mighty don’t consult with the likes of us.” He smiles, catches her by the waist, nuzzles her neck with a stubbly chin until she shrieks and gives him a playful slap. “Get the girls. We’ll be wanting to bury anything we can’t carry.”
“Aye. But if they burn my house down again, the next one better have an extra bedroom. And a bigger kitchen.”
He nods slowly. “Agreed.”
By nightfall, they hear the drums of the marching armies, but they’re already cleared out, up a hill and into their neighbor’s fields, backs bent under bundles of clothes and cooking pots, with a basket of winterberries as a peace offering for letting them stay a few nights.
Three days later the crow with golden spots finds Utar again. She’s flying heavy and drunk, gorged with carrion. Utar has to steady her with his fingers when she lands on the haft of his ax; he’s been helping out with the firewood.
“Battle done, Lady Crow?”
She belches in the least ladylike way imaginable. “And a big one at that.”
“My thanks. I’ll get the sweet red corn for you this year, my word on it.”
“It strikes me, Utar. You never ask us who won.” The crow lets out a croaking laugh, interrupted by another belch.
“Aye.” He shoos her away and calls for Mattie to get the girls, finish breakfast, get ready to go home. He doesn’t even wait for goodbyes; he spikes the ax into the nearby stump and heads back over the hill.
Utar only spares the briefest of looks for the smoldering ruin of his house. He collects his hoe from its hiding place and wades into his fields, feet sticking in the churned up battlefield muck, more blood than dirt. The scent of decay coats the back of his throat, but he’s used to it by now. Humming a working song, he sets to hoeing the blood, the burned cloth and charred wood, the hacked-up flesh and bone into his fields.
It doesn’t matter to him, who has won or lost. All he cares about is the good earth and its feeding, the way the soil drinks in death and turns rich and black with life. What he gives to his fields, they return ten fold in the best radishes in the fief.
And if it makes him smile, sometimes, to think that noble kitchens seek out his produce and feed their new crop of warriors on their previous crop of warriors, well.
He’s just a radish farmer, simple folk. What does he know.
Well, I wanted to write something for the lovely @lindsqualls since it sounds like she’s had a rough few weeks. And I wanted to write something that didn’t involve sentences in passive voice about paleosols, so there you go. I have such awful thesis brain right now I’m not going to claim it’s any good. But it felt nice to write.
Love!
The undines are on the beach again at sunset, smooth black and white pebbles skittering under their tiny blue feet. Meg limps down the steps of the lighthouse, waving her apron to shoo them away. They run only when she’s but a few feet away, liquid giggles following them into the waves.
“Little devils,” Meg mutters, scraping a few stray gray hairs from her forehead with fingers bent by age. “Either you’re getting faster, or I’m getting slower.” The pebbles are now mixed with shards of glass, stray scraps of paper fluttering in the endless, damp breeze. The undines think it a game, smashing the bottles or flinging them back to sea.
Meg picks her way through across the beach, smiling at the slick sound of her footsteps. There are a few bottles left unbroken: two clear flasks, one brown beer bottle, and a green thing with a treacherous, curving neck. She gathers these up in her apron and carries them back to the lighthouse.
Three of the notes shake easily from their bottles. For the green bottle – who thought that was a good idea? – she uses a chopstick, half of a pair whose mate has long since been lost, to draw the slip of paper slowly out. She unrolls the slips of paper and pins their corners with rounded pebbles.
He’s been lost for six months…
Hello, my name is Ryan…
My mother was diagnosed this morning…
I don’t know what to do.
The first three notes, she reads, taking in that joy, sorrow, confusion. It’s a dull, sweet pain in the heart. She carries them to her pot-bellied stove, sets the papers inside one by one with a whispered, “You are not so alone as you think.”
This last note, unsigned, she smooths over and over with her fingers. There is a story here, too nebulous to name, too desperate, begging for more answer than a silent, listening ear. Meg collects up note and its bottle – one of the clear flasks – and carries them up the winding stone staircase to the top of the lighthouse.
At the top, she waits out the short night, watching stars streak by in the sky, warming her hands by the captured light that powers the great lamp. The horizon slowly draws from black to red, heralding the rising Sun. She turns down the lamp and adjusts the mirrors, angle precise.
At the end of the world, the light is thick and warm, more particle than wave. She collects up the first rays with the mirrors, ushers them into the little bottle, then stops it up with the note. Of all the stars, the Sun has always been Meg’s favorite, close and loving, the one her Papa told her long ago to wish on because it is the giver of life.
The Sun also powers the last lighthouse, calling all good ships home.
The undines are back on the beach, searching for more bottles. They creep away, but she beckons one forward, offering it the bottle, miming to throw. The little creature has a much better arm than her; the glass, still glowing with morning light, arcs out of the water and then is nothing more but a distant flare on the waves.
Meg watches until it’s gone, hissing when one of the undines takes up another bottle and makes to break it.
There is no telling, if her answer will make it back to the person desperate enough to ask a question to the void. But perhaps that doesn’t matter; it is an answer, and someone will find it.
I don’t know what to do.
–Follow the light. Always.