Story: "Embedded", The Future Fire, 24/4/2016

Artwork by Miranda Jean
A cascade of black and green 1s and 0s
in waves and fractals

Presenting: "Embedded", a cyberpunk noir story, now dropped at The Future Fire, with artwork by Miranda Jean.
"Embedded" was written in my 4th week of Clarion under the watchful eye of N.K. Jemisin. I was challenged that week to write a type of story I wouldn't usually write, so I chose cyberpunk, mainly to take a chunk out of the alleged "masculine" history of the genre. I chose to write a social justice twist to the story because of many of the current issues pertaining to internet privacy, harassment and stalking, and how they affect queer people.

Thanks to all my Clarion classmates for their feedback, to Nora for her help on making this story (and all my writing) better, and Djibril at The Future Fire for believing in the trajectory of this tale.

Insert Snappy Newsline Update Here: Sale, Competition Results, Narration, "At The Edge", Story Releases

The first quarter of 2016 has been moving along at a quiet, steady pace, and I thought it about time I collected together some of the news that's happened recently.

• I made a sale to Kaleidotrope! Fist pump to ticking a neat indie venue off my "To Be Published In" list. The story is "And We Spake of Them Words Which Make You Goddess", one of my more experimental sci-fi/fantasy mash up pieces, playing with language drift, hallucinations, loneliness, anger, and everyday gods. I don't have a release date yet, but it's something to look forward to in 2017.
• I did a narration! For Escape Pod's Artemis Rising Month, featuring women and non-binary authors, I read Alanna McFall's "Singing to the Stars". Even got my own fancy bio and photo on the page.
• I won third place in the Au Contraire 3 Short Story Competition! Convened by Lee Murray and Dan Rabarts, who are the editors of "At The Edge" coming out in July, the final stories were judged by Philip Mann. Congratulations to Robinne Weiss who took first place and Andi Buchanan who took second place, and thank you to everyone in involved. The placing doesn't mean the story gets published, but I'm sure there'll be a home for it somewhere if it got such a good reception from such an esteemed author.
• The "At The Edge" Kickstarter is fully funded and reached both of its stretch goals! This means the anthology will get its print run (and will look gorgeous on many a bookshelf around the world). I look forward to being able to attend the book release party at Au Contraire 3 in June.
• Coming up very soon I have story releases! Quiet for the first half of the year, then everything happens at once! My cyperpunk piece "Embedded" will be in the next issue of The Future Fire, "Splintr" will be in "At The Edge" (read an excerpt HERE), and - FANFARE PLEASE - "An Atlas in Sgraffito Style" will be in the next issue of Shimmer Magazine. I believe "Atlas" is my best story yet, and the Shimmer badgers have given it a good frisking to make it even betterer. This is the most nervous and excited I've been about any of my story releases - it's a Clarion story, a story that went through blood, sweat, and tears, a story I want to go a long way, and if one was to quantify my style at this point in my life this story would be it.

I'll be back soon to start throwing jazz hands about the "Atlas" release.