Short Stories 366:7 — “How to Move Spheres and Influence People,” by Marko Kloos

I have a confession. I read and re-read the first, I don't know, six or seven Wild Cards books over and over again. See, I love superheroes—that's probably obvious given my whole debut novel thing—and the X-Men were staples of my childhood especially because of the whole "born different to people who aren't the same" …

Short Stories 366:6 — “An Open Letter to the Family,” by Jennifer Brozek

Epistolary format is a hard format to pull off. Writing a fictional narrative through a letter puts an extra burden on character voice to do it all: world-build, provide the POV lens for the entire theme and plot, you name it. I have a love of epistolary format, so when I saw this story in …

Short Stories 366:5 — “Marigolds,” by L.S. Johnson

Leading up to the flour war in France in 1775, "Marigolds" by L.S. Johnson was a wonderful mix of the historical and speculative, which is exactly the premise of the anthology in which it is found, Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. Here we meet Claire, a woman working in a brothel …

Short Stories 366:4 — “The Pursuit of…” by Courtney Milan

The first of (likely many) novellas during this project to talk about short(er) fictions every day, The Pursuit of... by Courtney Milan does something pretty damn amazing: it juggles really heavy, really depressing realities of history alongside two incredibly engaging characters and ends up telling a really delightful, funny, and uplifting story. Full disclosure: I've …

Short Stories 366:3 — “The Case of the Passionless Bees,” by Rhonda Eikamp

One of the nice things about listening to anthologies on audio is how neatly stories often line up with a walk of the dog, or of a particular set of chores. I listened to this latest from Women Destroy Science Fiction while walking the dog around the block a few times, and the performer did …

Short Stories 366:2 — “Rosa, the Dimension Pirate,” by Matisse Mozer

I love a good origin story, and I love the idea of dimension-hopping, so "Rosa, the Dimension Pirate" from Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) had the benefit of hitting both those buttons for me as a reader, and it ran with it throughout the story. We meet Rosa right off, in the …