"A Fear of Falling Under", The Future Fire, Issue 27, September 2013

Next September release!

Introducing "A Fear of Falling Under", in issue 27 of The Future Fire.

I raved about the artwork by Robin E. Kaplan on Twitter and I'll rave about it here: holy wow, the artwork is INCREDIBLE. It suits the story so perfectly, I love the colour scheme, the whole "is that TOMATOES EVA person is holding?" wierdness of the first piece, and the characterization in the second piece. Also, the starfield is a lot like the background of PT, so, symmetry.

Be prepared for something different again with "Fear". Yes, the title was the inspiration (from a song about losing yourself physically and mentally, and sometimes not in good ways). Yes, I play with the protag's reality. It was a lot weirder in earlier drafts, almost incomprehensible. Yes, I was playing it a little Russ/Tiptree. Yes, there's a nod to one of my favourite books of all time.

Twinkle twinkle little star, I can see you're not that far...

Cover art of The Future Fire, issue 27: a person in a long black coat and black top hat
walks with their back turned through a graveyard

Short Fiction I've Been Reading 24/9/2013

I started this year with good intentions: a short story a day, with a link and review aggregation at the end of week. I was going well until June when I hit a mental speed bump and reading burn out. I wanted to read as much as I could to further my craft, but there was a sameness coming through; possibly a mix of the venues I was reading and I'm not an adequate reviewer with my lack of academic language.

So I'll try and slip slowly back into the short reading again. Won't be as regular as my story-a-day project, but I'm feeling in a better place to read shorts again. I'll probably go with a short one or two sentence review, and broaden the review if I feel like it.

Here's what I've read recently.

Five Questions: "The Mary-Jane Effect"

It's a big release week, so it's time to bring PT out of the closet and let him ask the (hard? weird?) questions.

AF: You, PT you awake.
PT: Zzzzt huh, what? You doing something?
AF: Come on you, you keep talking like that, I'll start counting those against you five questions
PT: Whu? Five Question time again? *sproing* Alrighty then! I'm awake, I'm your internal blog voice, I'm on the case, yeah! What we talking about?
AF: "The Mary-Jane Effect", released in audio and text format at Wily Writers this week. And I won't count that as a question.

Now live at Wily Writers: "The Mary-Jane Effect"

And we're live!

"The Mary-Jane Effect", winner of the Wily Writers SpecFicNZ Short Story Competition, is now available through Wily Writers in audio and text formats.

If you'd like a little more background on the story, check out the "The Next Big Thing" blog I wrote, including my fan-castings for the characters.

Thanks to Wily editor Angel McCoy, and guest judge Nathan Crowder for picking my story.

Image accompanying the story: a young girl, with the Wily fox on the left, and a red hand print on the right.

Sale: "Black out the Sun", Innsmouth Magazine "Wings"

Oh how boring, another one *wink*.

I'm being welcomed to the creepy Innsmouth Free Press family. My story "Black out the Sun", a tale about learning to fly taking on a whole new creepier meaning, will be appearing in the Innsmouth Magazine special October edition called "Wings".

Whoop!

Toilet Break

As it says on the box: toilet breaks and detours have been scheduled in.
[Ramble on life, the universe, and everything after the cut]

"Halfway Between Asleep and Dead" live at Luna Station Quarterly

Howdy do. Sorry for the breakdown in communication. I've been on holiday, among other things. More on that later.

For now, my creepy out-of-body experience story "Halfway Between Asleep and Dead" is now live at Luna Station Quarterly. Huzzah!

It's odd to see this story finally in print, because I wrote it so long ago - nearly 3 years ago - and has been bouncing around the traps for quite a while. It's an interesting little time capsule that shows how far I've come even in 3 years.



climming lader of sucsess to hard...needz a nap