Though I can hardly believe it, awards nomination season is upon us. The Nebula Awards have begun accepting nominations (note that this year, both Active and Associate members can vote!). Others will follow before we know it, as time continues to behave in ways both inexorable and strange.
This year I had several works published that are eligible for awards consideration. In addition, this is my first year of eligibility for the Campbell Award.
“Unplaces: an Atlas of Non-existence” – 1,750 word short story in Clarkesworld, March 2018.
Excerpts from the First Edition, with handwritten marginalia. Recovered from the ruins of Kansas City. Part of the permanent exhibit of the Museum of Fascisms.
(This story has been called Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Science Fantasy. Categorize it as you will.)
“The Good Mothers’ Home for Wayward Girls” – 3,500 word short story in PseudoPod, March 2018. Horror.
Kate hangs back and stage-whispers: You’re not going to survive, new girl. The Mothers will punish you or you’ll slit your wrists. Kate is brave because there are Mothers watching us, one in the doorway to the kitchen, one clinging to the ceiling, leaving a puddle of ichor on the moldy tile of the hall. We will need to clean up that mess later.
No. We will make the new girl do it.
“Ports of Perceptions” – 300 word flash fiction in Glittership 53, March 2018. Science Fiction.
Chase had come down with both kind of viruses, and worried Hunter had been growing distant, so Hunter suggested they indulge in some PKD. While the drug kicked in, they sprawled on the mattress in Hunter’s flat and exchanged.
“Their Eyes Like Dead Lamps” – 3,000 word short story in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 37, March 2018.
If all this had happened two years earlier, I’d have accepted it easily. But the world starts to narrow, and by the time someone–your mother or your aunt or whoever–sits you down for The Talk, everything has calcified. If I’d been younger, I would probably remember all this as play, or as a trick my mind played to cover for what really happened. If I’d been older, maybe I wouldn’t have seen anything down by the bank besides Cassie.
That night I lay in bed, listening to the thunderstorm that swept in, as they often did, from the south and west, and thinking of those shapes along the bank, imagining sharp teeth, eyes like dead lamps. No one ever built a fort because the world was safe.
“Pelecanimimus and the Battle for Mosquito Ridge” – 4,100 word short story in Crossed Genres’ Resist Fascism, November 2018. Fantasy.
When I think of the look in your eyes, I feel as though I’ve been sliced open. But I believed in this cause then, and now I have seen proof with my own eyes: we must stop the Fascists here, or they will spread across Europe. There are German bombers overhead and Italian arms on the other side of the lines. I long for your arms, my Eli, but I fight to make the world safe for us, and I have seen soldiers (of all genders) fight on despite worse injuries. I believe we will triumph, and I will return to you. Should we fail, I take comfort in this, that the struggle is worth all.
I do not know when this letter will reach you. I cannot send it now, for fear of revealing too much to the enemy, and knowing that I have expressed my love for you in a way many of my Comrades would loathe. I will keep this letter to myself and, if G-d wills, find a way to get it to you soon.