Tiny things floated through the air all around him. He stretched out his palm and kept it motionless long enough that one drifted to be trapped in his palm. A seed, a brown seed. Attached to one end a tuft of hairs, fine and feathery, to carry it along. Carefully he raised his hand, examined it more closely. So small. As it neared his eye, it became no longer brown, ridges and swirls marked its surface in grays and greens and reds that somehow blended together to create the impression of brown from just a few inches farther away.It’s that time of year when people are stepping up their reading for the various awards and their best of the year lists. I’m making my own, and if you’ve got something I should be paying attention to, please feel free to point me to it in the comments here or mail it to me at catrambo at gmail.com. I prefer .rtf for short stories, and .mobi for longer stuff. Please put “FOR AWARD CONSIDERATION” in the header so I can spot it more easily in the seething morass that is my inbox. I’m eligible to nominate for the Hugos, the Nebulas, and WFC.
If you are interested, I’ve got two pieces that I consider my best of the year, and I’m happy to send copies for your consideration. One is “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” a short story which appeared in my collection, NEAR + FAR. I’m still pretty proud of the audience gasps that piece got when I read it at World Fantasy this year. It’s an odd piece, but I like it a lot. The other piece is a novella, A SEED ON THE WIND, which appeared in stand-alone form from Athans Associates.
Speaking as one of the people who gasped at your WFC reading, you *should* be proud. I haven’t read Near+Far yet, but I doubt that reading that story will provoke nearly the same impact as hearing it did.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
You may also like...
Early December Stuff
Instructions not included.In recent news, I’ve got some stuff in recent bundles. The VanderMeer Winter Mix Tape Bundle includes The Bestiary, which holds my piece, Tongues-of-Moon Toad, and The Other Half of Sky, edited by Athena Andreadis, and containing space opera piece “Dagger and Mask.” The Holiday Fantasy Bundle includes my Christmas R-rated story, “He Knows When You’re Awake” in Naughty or Nice, edited by Jennifer Brozek
I talked about reading the classics in an Another Word piece for Clarkesworld Magazine. What prompted me to write it? Because there’s been a lot of discussion of the classics as though pointing out problems with a piece is the same as crossing it off the list of stuff to be read. I talked about the decision to change the World Fantasy Award bust back in January for Clarkesworld and emphasized that yeah, you can read H.P. Lovecraft and yet not want to accept an award bearing his face, and moreover, your objections could be pretty complicated and nuanced.
Just turned in my edits for “Red in Tooth and Cog,” which appears early next year in a market that’s been a longtime goal of mine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
Writing wise, I continue assembling Hearts of Tabat into coherent shape. I’m also finishing up a bespoke story, tentatively titled “She Eats My Heart Entire,” for an anthology and I’ve got a couple of others I want to finish up this month, including a Christmas piece that I should get drafted today and at least a couple for the Patreon campaign.
This has been in the works for a bit, but I’d like to officially announce that Hydra House, run by Tod McCoy, will be putting out my two volume set of science fiction stories, NEAR and FAR. I’m excited about Samala Coffey, the artist who will be doing the covers and will have more on that once she and I have everything worked out.
Each volume will be 60-70 thousand words of stories, including some unpublished ones, and notes about them. The two books are split up into near future and far future stuff. Hence, the name. 🙂 Story order is still a work in progress.
Among the stories contained in NEAR will be:
10 New Metaphors for Cyberspace (Abyss & Apex); Fists Like Mountains (previously unpublished); Flicka (Subversions); Legends of the Gone (Talebones); Long Enough and Just So Long (Lightspeed); A Man and His Parasite (previously unpublished); The Mermaids Singing, Each To Each (Clarkesworld); Memories of Moments, Bright as Passing Stars (Talebones); Not Waving, Drowning (Redstone); Peaches of Immortality (appeared in Fantasy Magazine under the title “The Immortality Game); Raven (Twisted Cat Tales); RealFur (Serpentarius); Therapy Buddha (2020 Visions)
Among the stories contained in FAR will be:
Amid the Words of War (Lightspeed); Angry Rose’s Lament (Abyss & Apex); Bots d’Amor (Abyss & Apex); Kallakak’s Cousins (Asimov’s); Fire on the Water’s Heart (M*Brane); Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain (previously unpublished); Fungus, Soy, and Beans (previously unpublished); Grandmother (will appear in upcoming anthology); I Come From the Dark Universe (previously unpublished); Mother’s World (Aeon); Seeking Nothing (Daily Science Fiction); Space Elevator Music (previously unpublished); Surrogates (Clockwork Phoenix 3); TimeSnip (Basement Stories); Zeppelin Follies (Crossed Genres)
I’ve tried to be a bit of a completist about this, and include everything Sfnal that’s appeared so far. I think it ends up letting some stories resonate against each other, particularly the five in FAR that involve the same space station.
2 Responses
Speaking as one of the people who gasped at your WFC reading, you *should* be proud. I haven’t read Near+Far yet, but I doubt that reading that story will provoke nearly the same impact as hearing it did.
That’s a brilliant answer to an intteesring question