publications

Here’s the cover for A QUIET SHELTER THERE, edited by Gerri Leen, from Hadley Rille Books, which will include my flash piece, “The Fisher Queen.” Here’s the description of the anthology:

An estimated four million unwanted dogs and cats are euthanized every year in the United States. Throughout the country, animal shelters, humane societies, and other rescue groups are working to change this by helping homeless animals find forever homes, healing those that are sick or injured, providing training and socialization for those that need it, and working toward a future in which there are no more homeless pets. This anthology directly benefits one of those shelters, Friends of Homeless Animals, which has rescued and placed dogs and cats in the Washington D.C. metro area since 1973. In 2010, even with limited funding due to the downturn in the economy, FOHA found homes for 350 dogs and 150 cats, including hard-to-place FIV positive cats, and they routinely house over 100 dogs and 50 cats at their shelter in rural Northern Virginia. 70 percent of the profits for A Quiet Shelter There will be donated to FOHA–other shelters across the country will be able to buy the book at a discounted price if they want to use it for fundraising.

It’s for a good cause, and I’m happy to be included in the project.

Look! Mats Minnhagen has finished the cover for A SEED ON THE WIND, the Fathomless Abyss novella I’ve got covering out this October. The scene’s one that occurs early in the book and gets referenced again and again throughout, so this cover, which comes so close to what was in my head, delights me with the way it conveys the space of the story.

If you don’t know what the Fathomless Abyss is, it’s a shared world project created by Philip Athans involving myself, Jay Lake, Joe McDermott, Mel Odom, Mike Resnick, and Brad Torgersen. Books out in the series already include Philip Athans’ DEVILS OF THE ENDLESS DEEP and J.M. McDermott’s NIRVANA GATES. I had a lot of fun writing “A Querulous Flute of Bone” for the TALES FROM THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS anthology and just as much fun writing this novella, which is the first half of a pair, to be finished in A CAVERN RIPE WITH DREAMS. Charles A. Tan recently talked with me about it for S.F. Signal.

I’m turning in something today that I’ve never tried before: a novella.

Back when I was first approached about the Fathomless Abyss, it involved an initial story and a later novella. Sure, I said, and whacked out a story for the first Fathomless Abyss book, TALES FROM THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS. It was “A Querulous Flute of Bone”, which I based on an O.Henry story, and which I think is one of my best stories to date. If you don’t believe me, spring for the 99 cent download and tell me if I’m wrong.

Then I started on the novella. The first thing I did was look up the length requirements. Wikipedia told me the official SFWA definition was 17500 to 40000 words. So just a long short story, right?

J.M. McDermott’s Nirvana Gates, a novella set in the world of the Fathomless Abyss, is now available for the Kindle and the Nook. If you enjoyed Tales from the Fathomless Abyss, you’ll be happy to find more set in that world.

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about the project so far is the way different people use the same material. I’m working on finishing up the next novella in the series, A Cavern Ripe With Dreams. I think I’ve mentioned it before; it’s heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” William S. Burroughs’ Junky, and Joe Lansdale’s The Drive-in Chronicles. Here’s the teaser from the beginning of it, which went out with Nirvana Gates.

Tina Conolly’s lovely podcast, Toasted Cake, has run “Coyote Barbie“.
EscapePod has a new story up, “Grandmother.”

If you enjoyed my story “Love, Resurrected,” I hope you’ll consider voting for it as a reader favorite over on Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

My children’s story is up on the site of the Animism TV show, which had asked me to write something, and which ended up being a bit of a downer as far as the happiness of the main character is concerned.

In news about my writing classes, I’m pushing the start back a week in order to get a few more students signed up. For details, click on “Upcoming Classes” up above!

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.

"The Immortality Game" (http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/new-fiction/the-immortality-game/) made it onto the Locus Recommended Reading List along with a whole bunch of more illustrious stories.

Locus Online ““ posts from Locus Magazine » 2011 Recommended Reading List

My story, "So Glad We Had This TIme Together," is up on Apex in an issue that includes a lot of really good stuff from Gregory Frost, Sarah Dalton, and Jim C. Hines. I hope you'll check it out!

The story itself was my week six Clarion West story – with "Zeppelin Follies" getting published last year, that means I've only got one story, "I Come From The Dark Universe," left from that batch that hasn't seen the light of publication yet.

So Glad We Had This Time Together

By Cat Rambo

JB: I’m submitting my resignation, effective immediately.
*
I can hear the distant hum of the building’s heart, the slow steps of a janitor cleaning its chambers with wafts of…

I've got a piece up on Tor.com about suffragettes and steampunk:

Suffragette Steampunk | Tor.com

Suffragette Steampunk by Cat Rambo