My first horror story Smartmob is out at Schlock Magazine, along with a story by the fantastic Nathan Ballingrud and some more great looking stuff.  Schlock previously did an interview with me, my first interview, in fact!  They’ve just overhauled their web design, and it’s a beautiful site, full of great stories!

My story Two Things About Thrand Zandy’s TechnoThèque is out now in The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography, with original art by Dermot Power!

Here’s an excerpt from an interview that will be appearing at the Journal soon:

I wrote the first draft of Two Things About Thrand Zandy’s TechoThèque in the final sixth week of the 2010 Clarion Writers’ Workshop.  Though, overall, Clarion was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, this story was a struggle.

My fifth week story had not gone over well, and so I was determined to nail my sixth and final draft.  I was determined all that week…to no avail:  by the end of the week, with a Sunday night deadline, I had no ideas and no words.  So Saturday morning I took refuge in a local cafe with Kai Ashante Wilson and just started frantically dumping whatever came to mind onto the page.  I worked pretty much continuously right up to and a little past the deadline the next day: thanks goodness Kai reminded me to occasionally eat and drink.

I usually do most of my real writing in revision, but this one went raw into the Clarion grinder… and came through it pretty much unscathed, and with some encouraging comments.  I’ve done a fair amount of revision since, for the most part in understanding Halo and clarifying her voice.  The comments of my Clarion-mates have been invaluable during that process, particularly in helping me avoid the pitfalls of my writing a female character.  But at a plot and paragraph level, this is pretty much what I wrote that weekend.

Before the Nebula Awards last year Sheila Williams, editor-in-chief of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and brilliant fantasy writer Lisa Goldstein visited me to take a tour of Skywalker Ranch and ILM.  Here’s Sheila’s Asimov’s editorial on that visit, and Lisa’s account.  What a wonderful day that was, ending with a reading by two of my favorite authors, Connie Willis and Gene Wolfe!

 

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I’m writing this from my friend Dermot Power’s house in London, where I am recovering from a wonderful, if exhausting, weekend at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton.  The details of the WFC are a bit fuzzy now, what with jet lag, rivers of beer and wine, a bit of a sniffle, and many hundreds of extraordinary conversations with extraordinary people.  But apparently, at some point I won the World Fantasy Award for best short story for my story “The Telling”.  I’d assume that I had dreamed the whole thing, but I’ve been presented with proof, and the award itself seems real enough.  Frighteningly so!

 

I’ll write more about the WFC weekend and the amazing folks I met soon.  For now, many thanks to Scott Andrews and Beneath Ceaseless Skies for taking a risk on the story, and to Jenn Hsyu, Karin Tidbeck, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, Olivia Do, Kai Ashante Wilson, Leah Thomas, Kali Wallace, Tom Underberg, Dallas Taylor, John Chu, and everyone else who read and commented on early drafts of the story!

 

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My science fiction short story “Bloom” is out now in the December issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

My story “The Telling”, published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies #109 last November, has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award.  I am flabbergasted.

Editor Scott H. Andrews and BCS are also up for Special Award—Non-professional.  My friend and Clarion 2010 classmate Karin Tidbeck is up for her brilliant short story collection “Jagannath” from publisher Cheeky Frawg, and the wonderful Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (proprietors of Cheeky Frawg and my Clarion instructors, mentors, and dear friends) are also up, with managing editor Adam Mills, for Special Award—Professional for the fantastic Weird Fiction Review website.

My story “Lost Wax” is out now in the August issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.  It got a “Recommended” from Rich Horton at Locus Magazine, and Best SF says: “It’s inventive and clever, the characters are non-normative, and the ending rounds a great story off nicely.”  You can buy it in bookstores or as an e-Book.

The audio performance of my story “Freia in the Sunlight” is out now on the Escape Pod website:  click here to listen to it for free.

Shaelyn Grey did a fantastic job reading the story:  many thanks to her, producer Mat Weller, Escape Pod editor-in-chief Norm Sherman, and the entire crew of Escape Pod.

My story “Lost Wax” is out in the August issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, available now in bookstores, from the Asimov’s site, and through most e-book sources, including iTunes and Amazon.  Yeast-tech!  Augur Bird!  A visit to Ma’am Roenard’s Cuttlefish Cabaret!  Here’s a sample:

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