January Flash Fiction Draw — “A Fairy Tale for the Little Acorn.”

Good morning! Today is the second Monday of January, which means today is the deadline for the Flash Fiction Draw challenge that Jeffrey Ricker drew a week ago. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can catch up here, but the short version is he used a deck of cards to randomly …

Sunday Shorts

Hello! I've still not 100% decided what I'll be doing this year with the blog re: short fiction, but a weekly check-in of some sort is in the cards, and so I'll start in that manner, at least. What I've Been Reading I've got a few anthologies and novellas on the go right now. I …

The Shoulder Check Problem

A couple of days ago, there was a discussion that sort of flashed past my timeline. An author of gay romance who is also a gay man was expressing the frustration over a sentiment in an m/m group that was posted—“women write the best m/m”—and how unwelcoming it can feel to gay men writing gay …

Audiobooks, 2020

Last year, the vast majority of my reading was short fiction, which was by design, as I’m really, really good at buying collections and anthologies and then a new anthology or collection comes out and repeat and suddenly I’ve read one story from eleven different books. This led to my Short Stories 366 Project last …

Short Stories 366:366 — “Molecular Rage,” by Marie Bilodeau

This may seem like an odd short story title to end the year on, but I honestly think it's kind of perfect, and a fantastic thematic story for this, our year of endless trashfire 2020. Originally published in the 2019 September/October Analog, "Molecular Rage" is so very Marie Bilodeau. What do I mean? First, Marie …

Short Stories 366:365 — “The Prisoner,” by Richard Lee Byers

I'm back to Powered Up! An Earth Prime Anthology today, and this time I'm basically reading what felt more-or-less like Captain America and John Constantine team-up fanfic, and I say that with the utmost respect and joy. Because Richard Lee Byers's "The Prisoner" combines the "modified soldier" hero of Victor ("the Sentinel") with an Irish …