Categories
locally hosted story steampunk

Sniff, Sniff Adventure!

Being a story of a beloved, if admittedly not terribly bright, minor character who may be familiar to you due to his adventures in The Curious Case of Miss Clementine Nimowitz and Her Exceedingly Tiny Dog, available in Murder on the Titania and Other Steam-Powered Adventures

(If you’d like to hear me read this story out loud, here you go!)

Once upon a time, there was a happy little puppy named Chippy. He liked to bark, bark and run, run, but best of all he liked to sniff, sniff. He took Sister on walks where she held on to the leather lead so she would not get lost, just as he’d once taken Mummy on walks. They would walk and he would sniff, sniff at trees and fire hydrants and bushes where all the other dogs and some cats would stop and it was ever so interesting. Yay!

One day Sister wasn’t home, and that was sad. But Sneezy Lady (she smelled of lye and washing powder and it made Chippy’s nose itch terribly) came to hide all the interesting smells, and she left the front door open. At long last, Chippy could go on a walk by himself! He enjoyed walking with Sister and Mummy of course, but sometimes a dog just wanted to walk down the pavement and sniff, sniff where he would sniff, sniff and not be told what he could and could not roll around in.

So out for a walk Chippy went. Yay!

Down the street he strolled to investigate all of the interesting bushes so he could read the mail. People walked past and said nice things to him, so he wagged his tail politely. And then run, run, on to the next place to sniff, sniff. Yay!

At the big red mailbox on the street corner, he heard a man say, “You!” in an angry voice.

Chippy didn’t like the angry voice at all, it made him feel sad. And then he smelled a whiff on the man’s shoes and realized it was Mister Angry, and those were the shoes Chippy had done a Bad Thing on once. He hadn’t meant to do it, but it had happened because his stomach had been so very upset, and he felt very bad about that too.

He tucked his tail and his ears down to show how sad he was, and then Mister Angry swooped him up! Chippy squirmed and yipped and tried to make the best of the situation, because maybe Mister Angry wasn’t so angry anymore and wanted to play. Maybe he had forgiven Chippy for the Bad Thing.

Mister Angry carried him to a waiting steamy puff-puff car, and Chippy was excited because he liked cars. There were always such smells, and sometimes he could stick his head out the window and let the breeze flop his ears. Yay!

But Mister Angry just held him by the scruff of his neck so he had to sit still. He must still be upset about the Bad Thing.

“Grand Aunt Clementine was so fond of you, you little overfed rat, and so is Deliah. I bet she’ll finally give over some of the money that should have been mine so I don’t throw you in the river with a brick tied to your neck,” Mister Angry said.

There were a lot of complicated words in there that Chippy didn’t understand, but he recognized Mummy and Sister’s names, so he wagged his tail.

Mister Angry took him into a house that smelled like boiled cabbage, old shoes, and dust, which was all right but those smells became boring very quickly. He shut Chippy in a little closet and went away. Chippy tried to scratch at the door, but Mister Angry didn’t come back. He sniffed around and cataloged all of the old shoes, nosing them over. One of the shoes had shinies in it. Chippy loved shinies, they were his favorite. He couldn’t resist the taste and licked, licked them until he’d swallowed them all. Which made his tummy feel happy and full of shinies. Yay!

The closet door opened, and Chippy wagged his tail to say hello. It was Missus Angry.

“Why did Morris put you in here?” she demanded, angry.

He tried to lick her hand to make her feel better but she pushed him away, which mixed sadness with the shinies rumbling in his stomach.

“What did you do to the shoes?”

Missus Angry shoved him aside with her foot and he hoped maybe it meant she felt like playing, but instead she seemed to only want to play with the shoes. She shook each one as she put it back. “Did he move the safe deposit keys?” she muttered. “He did say he wanted to check on those papers he took from his mad old aunt’s house—oh you nasty little creature!”

Chippy had wanted to help, so had started sniffing through the shoes again.

Missus Angry grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and he went limp, ashamed. “This is not place I want a dog, let alone a bad little creature like you.”

She knew about the Bad Thing too. Oh, no!

Missus Angry carried him out of the house and put him in the woodshed. “You won’t be able to harm anything here.” Then she shut the door and left him alone.

For a few minutes Chippy felt sad, because this must be about the Bad Thing and he was a Bad Dog, but then he began to sniff, sniff around. He could only be sad for so long.

The woodshed was even more boring and lonely than the closet. There were no shoes, and no shinies either. But Chippy went sniff, sniff and smelled rats. His doggy heart told him that he was supposed to hunt and kill rats. Then maybe Mister and Missus Angry would forgive the Bad Thing. He nosed wood aside and dug into the pile, his stomach rumbling happily around the shinies all the while, and found a big rat hole in the wall. Oho! Rats thought they were so clever. He squeezed through and popped out the other side of the wall, into the overgrown garden of the house.

The garden was very interesting and full of smells, like cats and more cats and even more cats. He ran back and forth and dug around a bit until he had gone sniff, sniff in every corner. Then he thought he should go home to Sister, because she would worry and it was getting very close to tea time.

The fence around the garden was just for decoration, and he could walk right between the iron bars in the gate. He trotted down the pavement, head held high, and paused to sniff, sniff at everything that seemed interesting.

“Oh, what a cute little doggy!” a young woman said.

She smelled of bread and baby burps, which were both smells he liked. So he wagged his tail for her and danced around to say hello, and she scratched his ears.

“Are you wearing a collar?”

She picked him up in her arms in the nice way and he licked her face. She laughed, and the sound made him feel warm and happy around the rumbling shinies that were feeling progressively less and less happy in his stomach.

“Well, little man, you are a long way from home. I shall send your mistress a message so she can come fetch you. But you can spend the afternoon with me.” The young woman carried him to a house down several streets. It was a small house but there were food smells and a squirmy little human in a high chair. She let Chippy wander around in the kitchen and the squirmy little human fed him handfuls of soggy cereal and peas. Yay!

His stomach rolled around and around the shinies and soggy cereal and peas when Sister arrived. Even though he felt strange and weighed down, he still jumped and barked for her. Yay, Sister!

“I can’t begin to thank you enough,” Sister said to the young woman. “Please, if ever you need a favor, do let me know. Chippy is very dear to me.” Then she took Chippy off into a different car, and she let him sit on her lip and sniff, sniff out the window.

“I had the nastiest little note from Morris, claiming he had you, you know,” Sister said during the ride. “But you seem to have rescued yourself quite well. That’s my clever little boy.”

Chippy wagged his tail, though he was beginning to feel a bit odd. Maybe it was the car rocking back and forth.

Sister took him into the house and set him down in the parlor. “And you’re home just in time for supper.”

Chippy loved supper. Yay!

But then his stomach gave one mighty rumble around all the shinies and mushy cereal and peas, and he did a Bad Thing again. Right in front of Sister. In the middle of her carpet that was still new enough it smelled of dyes and wool instead of shoes.

Horrified with himself, Chippy tucked his tail back and let his head hang, waiting to be told he was a Bad Dog. He felt like a Bad Dog.

Sister, a handkerchief over her nose, leaned down to look at the Bad Thing. “Oh my. Are those…keys? They look like safe deposit box keys.” She didn’t sound angry at all. In fact, she sounded pleased. “Did you eat those at Morris’s house? Oh, good boy. You’re a very good dog.”

He was a Good Dog?

He was a Good Dog! Chippy wagged his tail and wiggled happily for Sister. She picked him up and carefully skirted around the Bad Thing on the carpet.

“And you shall have a nice supper of chicken and steak now,” she told him. “While I make certain all of my jewelry and keys are well out of your reach. I don’t know where you picked up this terrible habit.”

Chicken and steak? Yay!

And Chippy was a happy little puppy indeed.

If you would like to read more about Chippy and his human friends, check out Murder on the Titania and Other Steam-Powered Adventures!

Categories
locally hosted story writing

[Short Story] What Purpose a Heart

This story was originally published by Scigentasy on 5/13/14. Looks like it’s not on the website any more, and I happen to really like this story, so I figured I’d repost it here for all to see.

There’s more I’m going to be doing with this universe, trust me. :)

Categories
locally hosted story writing

[Story] Silver Fish

This story was originally published in Lakeside Circus in 2016. As the Lakeside Circus website seems to be down long-term, I’m going to go ahead and repost is here on my blog so it’s still available to be read.

Note that this is the original as-submitted version of the story. I think there were a few edits made to it before it was published, but I seem to have lost that file.

Silver Fish

Josh wiggled his fingers in the moonlight, pale and graceful, and imagined them as fingerlings in the river, sliding through the currents. Under his bed, something buzzed like an angry bee.

Silvery fish flowed in through the open window, large as dobermans, blue moonlight glittering from flat eyes and scaled, underslung jaws.

Josh pulled his quilt up over his nose, afraid to breathe, heart thumping in his chest. Fish had no ears, right? They had teeth; he saw them, glittering triangles. Their fins waved slowly like the air had become water, too thick for lungs to hold.

The buzz sounded again from under his bed, like a cell phone vibrating over carpet but much lower, an angry growl.

It had to be the box.

The night before he had woken from a dream of running, running down a mountainside like Indiana Jones, a carved wooden box tucked under one arm, stolen from a temple where sylphs danced and men with long beards and longer knives scattered sand in great handfuls.

The box stayed in his arms when he woke, a creaky puzzle of mahogany that read like a story under his fingertips. He smashed it open with a hammer when he couldn’t decipher its knots and whorls, overeager to find within it the content of his dreams. The inside was lined with midnight blue velvet, cradling the silver shard of a mirror that twisted rather than reflected his face, showing his nose eating his cheeks one second and shrunk to a pinpoint the next.

Josh had shoved the mirror back into the gaping hole of the box’s lid, then rolled the mess up in a tattered green army surplus blanket normally reserved for picnics and hidden it under his bed like a shameful secret. He’d hidden other secrets there before, the results of pranks: stolen pencil cases and Lana Douglas’s pigtail, cut off with a pen knife.

From under the bed, the box snarled, insistent and angry.

Startled, the fish whipped in the air, flicking their fins and streaming back out into the night.

snap and crash and slam, doors up an down the block opened. “What the hell are those?” a man shouted. More people screamed in a wordless cacophony, high and discordant and then crunch. One less scream.

He knew that crunch. He’d hit Jeffery’s little sister’s bunny with his go cart, and accident, and it had made that sound. It had made him sick. He never wanted to hear that sound again, but it still echoed in his ears.

The cool night air gnawed his bare legs as he twisted free of his quilt. Josh’s shaking fingers found the rough blanket and he pulled the box from under his bed. Shards of wood scattered across the floor, too complex a puzzle to be solved with the roll of duct tape his father kept next to the hammer.

Josh reached for the warped mirror, and saw the way it twisted his fingers into lithe silver fish in the moonlight. That had to be the answer, then; the mirror turned what it saw into a monster. He grabbed the Louisville slugger next to his bed and drove it into the glass again and again, crack and crash and smash, until the mirror was little more than powder.

The silvery dust smeared across the floor made him a distorted, fuzzy shadow. The back of his throat tasted metallic with fear, like he’d licked up some of that shattered mirror. Dreams can’t be destroyed; they can only be contained. The words of his third grade teacher echoed up from his memory. When she’d said that, it had been a hopeful message. No one can hurt your dreams, they can only try to cage them up. You want to be a baseball player, a race car driver, a brain surgeon? No one can stop you. Smash the locks, open the cages, ignore the doubts, let your dreams be free.

But nightmares, Josh felt with the clarity of a bone needle dragging down his spine, like the teeth of the silver fish, were dreams as well. Nightmares were just a different direction for reality to twist, down into the dark.

At his window something growled, the low rumble of distant thunder, of some ancient beast freed from the shards of a broken prison. Josh’s hands tightened on his slugger as he turned. It was his dream, his nightmare, and he should be able to beat it, right? Dreams – nightmares – couldn’t be bigger, stronger, than the people who dreamed them, right?

Only he’s learned in school about I have a dream, and about I am become Death.

Hot, dank breath rolled through the room as Josh howled into the face of a reflection shattered past all recognition.

crunch

Categories
free read writing

The return of Significant Figures!

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!

Categories
writing

Go Read My Story

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!!!

Categories
for fun free read writing

[Fiction] Midnight Baking

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.”

Categories
charity tom hiddleston writing

Lightspeed and UNICEF UK

Just in case you hadn’t heard yet: I HAVE A STORY IN LIGHTSPEED AW YEAH HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW

I’m in a TOC with NK Jemisin. I’m in a TOC with NK Jemisin. MY HEART CANNOT HANDLE THIS.

Anyway. Whew. Deep breaths. Yes. The Tell Me There Will Be No Pain is in December’s issue of Lightspeed, now available from many a fine purchasing establishment. If you want to wait (and you shouldn’t), it will be available online on 12/30. Trust me, I’ll say something on my blog when that happens.

Colonel Rathbone attends my final debriefing. I’m wearing a paper hospital gown that doesn’t cover my ass; I’ve got a breeze where no breeze has any right to be, from the back of my neck right down where the good Lord split me. But despite that I’m sweating, the backs of my thighs sticking to the paper covering the hospital table. The metal contacts set all around my head feel cold, sending little shocks that make my teeth itch…

Technically, this is actually a reprint, since the story was originally published in the special edition of Women Destroy Scifi that went to the Kickstarter backers. Not exactly a wide release, if a special one that had me super excited. So I’m really happy that this story will finally be widely available to read. It’s an important story to me, and probably the best one I’ve ever written thus far.

And also:

Screen Shot 2014-12-01 at 11.47.01 AM

$385 encompasses the original payment plus the reprint payment for being in the December issue. And you might recall what this means; it’s the same deal as two years ago with Comes the Huntsman. Story written as a birthday gift for Tom Hiddleston, funds get donated.

I hope you all run out and get this issue of Lightspeed right now. This story is incredibly important to me, for a lot of reasons. And I hope you’ll consider supporting UNICEF with me this month as well.

Categories
writing

Things of Mine Wot You Should Read in May

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.

Categories
free read writing

I wrote a story! The Heart-Beat Escapement (and a little bonus)

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.

Categories
free read writing

Quick writing update

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.