X Marks the Story - January 2018

X Marks the Story is now live at The Book Smugglers. This is the spiritual successor to The Monthly Round and covers five recent short SFF stories that I loved from late 2017/early 2018.

So thrilled to have my column go live. Please go check it out at The Book Smugglers! Links to just the stories are below:

“When The Night Blooms, An Artist Transmutes: A Three-Act Play” by Nin Harris (published in The Dark Magazine #31, December 2017)
“The Weight of Sentience” by Naru Dames Sundar (published in Shimmer Magazine #40, November/December 2017)
“The House at the End of the Lane is Dreaming” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (published in Lightspeed Magazine #91, December 2017)
“The Heaven-Moving Way” by Chi Hui, translated by Andy Dudak (published in Apex Magazine #104, January 2018)
“The Epic of Sakina” by Shari Paul (published in Fiyah Literary Magazine #5, January 2018)

Cheers!

---

The Monthly Round - December 2017

This is the last one, as I'm starting a new monthly recommendation/review column at Book Smugglers called X Marks the Story (the first of which will be out next Wednesday). But please join me for the final Monthly Round over at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together.

As, for those who just want links...

Tasting Flight - December 2017

“When The Night Blooms, An Artist Transmutes: A Three-Act Play” by Nin Harris (The Dark)
“The Weight of Sentience” by Naru Dames Sundar (Shimmer)
“The Birding: A Fairy Tale” by Natalia Theodoridou (Strange Horizons)
“The House at the End of the Lane is Dreaming” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Lightspeed)
“An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried” by Debbie Urbanski (Terraform)
“The First Stop Is Always the Last” by John Wiswell (Flash Fiction Online)

Cheers!

---

Quick Sips - Shimmer #40

It’s a pair of December stories from Shimmer Magazine that focus on love, on relationships, and on distance. That reveal characters dealing with new realities that their skills and their lives have brought them. Unexpected sentience and unexplored magic. That allow they to experience love and yearning, to brush against acceptance and community, only to have part of that taken away. These are not the happiest of stories, and yet they are both beautiful and alive with feeling, with heart. They show characters trying to make connections despite their fears, despite how their uniqueness might make them targets. And even when things fall apart, the stories show the fragile grace of love and compassion. To the reviews!

Art by Sandro Castelli

Quick Sips - Mithila Review #9 [poetry]

People, there’s a whole lot of SFF poetry in the most recent issue of Mithila Review. Twelve poems from nine different poets means there’s a hell of a lot to experience. The pieces swirl around a lot of themes, but some major ones are growth and imagination. Not surprising, perhaps, given that SFF is about wonder and imagination, about chasing those visions and dreams that are often called foolish or childish. Here we find the value of keeping something of a child’s view of the universe, without borders or limitations. There are other works that look at what happens when we let those borders constrict too much, and how sometimes we might struggle against the injustice of complacency. There’s a lot to get to, though, so I’ll jump right into the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 02/06/2017 & 02/13/2017

Two weeks have passed and Strange Horizons has put out both a pair of stories and pair of poems that continue their focus on global and domestic justice. These are stories and poems that look at the harsh realities of injustice. At the way that hatred and misunderstanding and frustration can fuel people to commit horrendous acts against one another. The way that the danger of those acts can push people to hide themselves, to quiet themselves, to censor themselves. These are pieces that remove the censor, that explore what stories are told not to heal wounds but to make them just bearable enough that people won't try to stop those responsible for causing them. It's a rather difficult collection of speculative work, but also moving, beautiful, and important. So yeah, to the reviews! 

Quick Sips - The Sockdolager #7

You know, it probably shouldn't surprise me that the latest issue of The Sockdolager, coming as it does so close to Halloween, is incredibly dark. But I will admit that I was expecting something a bit more lighthearted. What I got was an incredible issue filled with stories told with clever flourishes and an occasional sense of fun, yes…but stories that nonetheless are dark and darker and oh my glob I think I need to spend some time staring at funny cat videos now. Shock aside, though, these are some amazing tales, that lift and sink and inspire and depress. These are stories that fit in with the season, with dying of summer and the creeping nearness of winter. These are stories that I wholeheartedly recommend, though perhaps aren't for the faint of heart. To the reviews! 

Quick Sips - Mithila Review #4

The June Mithila Review is out and to me is all about time and weight. About cycles of harm and history and time and intent and the hope of breaking free. The hope of finding a way to something better, to something not tainted with the violence of harm and loss and grief. There's a reaching in these stories and poems, a looking at what works and what doesn't work. What falls apart under the gaze of context and what might have a chance of standing up. It's a great issue with a nice mix of poetry and fiction and it's time to review!

Art by Ashim Shakya

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #73 - People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction - THE FLASH

It's here! Lightspeed Magazine's People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction is here!!! And wow. The Destroy! issues have been great since the first go and this third round is no less deep or profound or hitting. Because of the enormous nature of the project, I'm breaking up the issue into its constituent parts and looking first at the flash fiction. I'll be back to look at the longer pieces as well, but that might take a bit longer... These stories, though. There's humor and hope and crushing despair and all the things in between. These pieces of flash know how to hit and hit hard and leave the reader gasping. They are going and there's a lot to get to so to the reviews!

Art by Christopher Park

Quick Sips - Mothership Zeta #3

The editorials in this issue of Mothership Zeta swirl around the idea of fun. And the stories of the issue do a fine job of illustrating the many ways that fun can work. A fun that is funny and a fun that is fast and action-packed and a fun that is clever and witty and a fun that is earnest and uplifting. The stories move well, from light to darker to transcendent, each piece well selected and placed in the larger flow of the issue. And all told each story made me smile at something, a clever line or a funny situation or a breath of hope, and if fun was the goal, then I'd say the issue is a success. To the reviews! 

Art by Elizabeth Leggett

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 01/04/2016 and 01/11/2016

Today I'm looking at two weeks of Strange Horizons material, which normally means a bit of everything except that I don't feel quite qualified to talk about the nonfiction (though it is quite interesting and I recommend checking it out). The fiction, though, is strange and fantastic, two stories that approach history and faith and journeys for meaning. And the poetry features departures and ghosts, of people lost and of the children we used to be. Everything works quite well and it's time to review!

THE SIPPY AWARDS - The "I'd Ship That" Sippy for Excellent Relationships in Short SFF

The Sippy Awards are upon us! Know ye excellent short fiction and despair...er, wait, no...rejoice! Yes, that's the ticket. Rejoice, for the hour of the award that no one asked for has come. I mentioned a while ago that I'd be running these, and here is the first. The format will be the same for each award. There will be five total awards, and five stories will be featured, with one "Big Sip" and four regular-sized Sippy Awards. First up is--

The "I'd Ship That" Sippy 

for Excellent Relationships in Short SFF

That's right, it's all about relationships today. I'm a sucker for a good love story, but not all of the stories below are happily-ever-afters. Indeed, a good relationship is one that's messy, that's complex. That's alive. These are stories with relationships at their hearts, and that do a damn fine job of showing people trying to find in each other a great many things: forgiveness, escape, redemption, acceptance. And these are the stories that I picked out as containing my favorite relationships.

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 10/05/2015, 10/12/2015, and 10/19/2015

Okay, here we are in the fourth week of October, and with these three weeks of Strange Horizons the month shows no signs of slowing down. The good news is that the fund drive that had been going on was fully funded! So there will be even more great stories, poems, and nonfiction next year. The other good news is that there is a lot of fiction and poetry that was released as part of the bonus issue. I say good news because, while it might destroy me, there is an awful lot to like about these pieces, many of which deal with the way we tell stories, and what we choose to tell stories about. And I just need to get to the reviews!

Art by Rachel Kahn

Quick Sips - Crossed Genres #32 - Portals

The theme for this month's Crossed Genres is Portals. And the stories do a great job exploring that idea, that theme. For portals are openings, are possibilities. They lead somewhere, and not always to places that are expected or what they seem. In each of these stories there are portals, be they food or rifts in space or boxes that can shift reality. To step through that portal is to take a chance, to find something wholly new. These stories are strong and they are powerful. So I'm going to get to reviewing, okay?