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Fellow readers! I had a short story published this week over at Strange Horizons. It’s called Palimpsest, and it’s a look at the silences that cause strain in close relationships and the hidden injustice of women not being deeply known by their own families. There’s also some climate change, (poorly understood) A.I., and a little bit of near-futurism, too.
Anyway, I’m pretty proud of it (I started writing it back in early 2023 and it took a lot of revisions to get right) and wanted to share it with y’all. But sharing it alerted me to the fact that I have been woefully neglecting my own short fiction reading lists, so I got back into them and found some really good stories in the virtual stacks.
As a result, this week instead of bookish news you get a short list of notable speculative short fiction and poetry that I enjoyed, and hope you will, too.
- Speculative poetry is…not really my jam. Despite the fact that I’ve reviewed a collection of it before, a lot of it feels kind of like hearing a friend shout at me in a language I don’t know very well from several rooms over. It’s welcome and familiar and I feel like I should get what’s going on, but it doesn’t quite coalesce. I say all of that to say that Angela Liu’s poem “The Language of Fireflies”, published in Psychopomp, was absolutely enthralling and I loved the way the language spun such vivid images despite my understanding gap. [Psychopomp]
- I tend to prefer a long, loving epic myself, but I notice an uptick in publications that specialize in flash fiction(usually under 1000 words) and drabbles(under 100 words). It’s hard to write something short, sweet, and coherent, but Nico Martinez Nocito hits us with all of that and a good creepy scare in the 100 word tale “Thirteen Hours”. Fun fact–the author gives us a whole story in 100 words, and I’ve gone through ninety-three to try to get you to read it. They do a better job, so check it out.[Rat Bag Lit]
- Ruth Joffre’s Woodpecker, Warbler, Mussel, Thrush is simultaneously one of the most heartbreaking, timely, and creative things I’ve read this year. It’s climate change fiction with a fantasy feel. It also hit me in the gut and made me feel remarkably sad and remarkably appreciative of what we have now, as well. You should definitely read it, and as a bonus, there’s an audiobook version as well. [Podcastle]
- When I finished reading A.L. Goldfuss’ “Drosera regina”, I literally shut my laptop, sat back in my seat and said “Ay, yooooooooo!”, out loud. It’s about a woman whose body operates much like a carnivorous plant. I’ll let you read the story to fully understand what that means, but as a woman who has always struggled with the heartbreaking and seemingly inverse relationship between male desire and male respect, this story is horrifying, yet resonant in so many ways. [Lightspeed]
- Neon And Smoke is a brand new magazine specializing in half-genre/half-lit flash fiction. They’ve only got one issue out so far but there are some good stories on the TOC, including Xavier Cole’s “She Peels A Soul”. It’s a creepy little gremlin story set in the confines of a truly bad marriage, and I enjoyed it. [Neon And Smoke]
- Let’s finish off this list with a classic–Naomi Kritzer’s “So Much Cooking”, which is all about cooking during quarantine caused by a deadly pandemic, told in the form of a blog. No, really. In case you’re wondering, it was written in 2015, and despite being enormously triggering now, is still a story I re-read often.[Clarkesworld]
That’s it for this update, beautiful people. There are no affiliate links on this page, and all of these stories are free to read, so enjoy and share with your friends. Now, go read something good(I just gave you a whole list!). Peace!
Equal Opportunity Reader 