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And my 101 word story “Morning News” appeared at Michael J. Solender’s Not From Here Are You blog on October 5th. The story was part of the “Dog Days of Summer” contest, and was a Special Jury Selection – it also appears in the downloadable eBook.
Category: fiction
Lake Ryder Island Swim – short story in Oh! The Horror
Another Static Movement anthology, with a very cool cover.
This one has a great line up, and includes my story “Lake Ryder Island Swim”, a kind of zombie story, set at a private school. The book is available from Amazon, and also through the Pill Hill Books shop
Heading for Boise – flash fiction at MicroHorror
MicroHorror, run by the most esteemed Nathan Rosen, writer, musician and editor, publishes flash horror fiction no more than 666 words long.
My recent piece Heading for Boise appeared on the site on October 6th. This has some of my favourite (perhaps over-used) elements – fragmented narrative, shifting viewpoints, flashbacks, a car wreck and a bit of a haunting. I was pleased with the results but still I hope it’s still readable and makes sense to readers other than me.
The Path to Centauri in October 10Flash
My quirky sci-fi flash “The Path to Centauri” is in the October issue of KC Ball’s quarterly flash fiction magazine. 10Flash publish ten flash fiction pieces in each issue, all around a common theme. October’s theme is “stop me if you’ve heard this one” – as it implies, the issue is filled with some pretty humourous stories.
I seem to have a lot of publication announcements at the moment – one of those convergence things. I have a couple more to announce next week too, but then I should be back to my usual self of ranting about politicians and global warming.
The Rotated – part four at Infinite Windows
Part four of my novel serialization is up now at the Infinite Windows site. More intrigue, a home invasion, a flashback, and a stop for burgers. Coming next month a car chase. There is also a host of new short fiction and poetry by some talented writers at the site worth checking out.
Sunset Photographer – flash fiction at 365Tomorrows
As the name suggests, 365Tomorrows publish a new science fiction piece every day.
My flash story Sunset Photographer has just been published.
“Tony Willits scrambled up the scree slope looking for the Leica on hands and knees. The sun, tapping the horizon, glistened through airborne particles. Deimos in the sky and some heavy terraforming dust-devils lurched along the far canyon edge. He’d taken some great photos, but this was too extraordinary to miss…”
A calamity, a tough choice and a gorgeous sunset, all set in the fabulous hills of Mars. 365T publish only flash fiction and their limit is 600 words, so this is pretty tight.
Bureau of Lost and Found Souls in October Static Movement
With a fabulous cover illustration by Lee Kurugangti
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The October issue of Static Movement is out, with a cool range of poems and stories, including my odd little piece The Bureau of Lost and Found Souls. What if lost souls could be found, but there were a few forms to fill out before you could claim them?
Cold Skin by Albert Sánchez Piňol
Just finished reading this wonderful dark gothic book. Despite being very different from much of what I’ve been reading lately – thrillers and young adult fiction – I didn’t feel I had to change gears to read my way through this. The book is fabulously compelling and actually, it was all I could do to have a break from reading it.
Set soon after World War I, on a nearly abandoned sub-antarctic island, with strange monsters and dangerous times, the book has a growing urgency. As a character study within a horror setting, this is brilliant, as a gothic thriller, it’s fabulous.
Perhaps it most closely reminded me of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy (which I’ve now returned to, and am enjoying, though in a different way), but with more concise and economical language.
Redcord… flash fiction in Antipodean Science Fiction
Antipodean Science Fiction is an online Australian speculative magazine which publishes flash fiction up to 500 words. They’ve published a couple of my stories over recent years – ‘Puncture Wound’ and ‘How Things Fall’ (both archived at The National Library of Australia’s Pandora Web Archive) – and this new piece is kind of interrelated to both of those, using the character (such as a character can be in a 500 word piece) Bayliss. She also appears in my story ‘Xuento’ in the Lame Goat Press book Kings of the Realm – A Dragon Anthology (yes, that’s a hard sci-fi story in a book about dragons).
The story, Redcord MacroNano Engine in Error State in the September issue is a hard-sci adventure. It’s fun taking these characters out for a spin in the depths of vacuum and I think I’ll keep on writing about them.
Stone Goddess in The Best of Lame Goat Press
Christopher Jacobsmeyer, editor of Lame Goat Press, compiled this collection from the five volumes Horror Through the Ages, Kings of the Realm: A Dragon Anthology, Diamonds in the Rough, The Next Time and Howl: Tales of the Feral and Infernal, the first five anthologies published late last year and early this year – some of these are now out of print. “Thirty stories from the anthologies, including one brand new one. Revisit the history of LGP in all its glory.”
My story, and one of my personal favourites, “Stone Goddess” is included in the anthology. This is the second ‘reprint’ of the story – it was also read by Barry J. Northern as a podcast at Cast Macabre.
The anthology is available from Amazon here
Lame Goat Press has had a busy and fraught year, and appears to no longer be active. Fortunately many of its volumes are still available – and this book makes for a great sampler.
Sean Monaghan - Writer 