Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #69

Art by Mary Haasdyk

It's another full month of content from Fireside Magazine, with five stories and one poem full of magic and family and cages. Whether the cage is more literal or figurative, though, varies from piece to piece. Sometimes the cage is a bargain there's no getting out of. Sometimes it's a future you're trying to avoid. Or a society's expectations that wrap tighter than chains. Or a promise made to a friend that takes on a life of its own. Whatever the case, the pieces show characters dealing with these constraints, these cages, and seeking perhaps to break free, to shatter the bars, to reach for freedom. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 01/21/2019 & 01/28/2019

Art by Rachel Quinlan

January keeps on going with two new issues from Strange Horizons featuring an original short story and two original poems. The works cover a lot of ground, thematically, dealing with memory and with place, with visions and perspective. The story takes an interesting look at fate and communication, while the poems bring a rather dark mood that flourishes in the sweeping stanzas of their forms. And mostly it shows the publication doing what it does, providing weekly SFF content that challenges and inspires. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online September 2018

It’s a very culinary issue of Flash Fiction Online, with three new stories all focused on food and the different ways people approach them. For some, eating is a way of finding comfort in a world that can be often cruel and uncertain. For others, it’s a form of seduction, a sensual experience of temptation. And for still others it’s a way of connecting with and putting to rest the past and the griefs of the dead. These are stories that revel in tastes and smells and strangeness, and though not all of them are necessarily speculative, they are all alive with flavors and very much worth checking out. To the reviews!

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Sips - Fireside Fiction #38

November's issue marks the last of 2016 for Fireside Fiction and it closes the year with equal measures joy and sorrow. Rather a fitting end to a very conflicting year, certainly. The stories all evoke the past in different ways, whether by spinning a tale laced with an older-style adventure or settling into grief and loss looking back on life or fitting characters into a tradition that has been going on since there have been roads crossing. These are incredibly different stories, but they share certain links beyond that they appear in the same space. They all create complex characters concerned with family and with place. With tradition and complicating tradition, putting their own twist on what has come before. And, of course, they are all quite good. So yeah, to the reviews! 

Art by Galen Dara

Quick Sips - Crossed Genres #35 - Anticipation

With this issue of Crossed Genres comes the very sad news that the magazine will be ending publication at the end of the year. Which is a shame, because it is a consistent source of quality short fiction that explicitly looks to promote new writers. Seriously, I don't think there is another SFWA-qualifying venue that guarantees a third of it's content is by a new writer. The only good news is that the publication is still here for a short while, and is still putting out good stories. The theme this month is anticipation, and the stories here take some interesting routes to explore the theme. To the reviews