As one of my lovely friends says, when you’re juggling things in life, some balls are glass and some are plastic. It’s been a hell of a last couple years, and at the time, this blog was a plastic ball, so I let it drop. I hope its rabid readers will forgive me. I won’t promise to be more regular about posting – that’s a recipe for “haha, no I won’t” – but I would like to be more regular, if I can properly motivate myself. This will likely involve a decent chunk of whining, followed by rewards of ice cream and whatever other sweet things happen to be in the house.
I have a few recent short story publications that I want to shamelessly plug, along with ways to support those magazines and publishers (publishing is hard, man!), and I want to follow that with some stories I’ve read recently and loved – because I don’t want to be all “hey, I’m back, and guess what, it’s a big self-promo post!” and, again, publishing is hard. Yelling about people’s stories makes them happy.
THE RECENT PUBLICATIONS PART
The Dark Magazine published my story “Love Sharp Enough to Rend” (ways to support them here!). When asked, I call this one my “4,000 words of a lamia eating a child” story. You have been forewarned. Around the same time, PodCastle published “The Consequences of Microwaving Styrofoam” (support them on Patreon!), in which I decided to take a fantasy trope and make it sad. (“this thing, but make it sad” tends to be how my story ideas work.) I also had my first solicited piece published in Crepuscular Magazine, called “In Defense of Forever“. I don’t feel like I can say much about this one without spoiling it, since it’s so short – if you have five minutes, I’d love it if you gave it a read!
I was also in three anthologies recently! “Facts that Lead to My Choosing of the Hawk” was in Murderbirds (the theme is exactly what’s on the tin. This was a Kickstarter anthology, so the best way to support is purchasing the book!), and “A Fragility, a Shadow” was in Robotic Ambitions from Apex Book Company (support them on Patreon!). I got to read from “A Fragility, a Shadow” at Charm City Spec as well, which was an absolute delight! I’ve got to make the trek out to Baltimore more often. Finally, I had a story called “The Hunter, the Monster, and the Things That Could Have Been” in Dark Matter’s Monster Lairs anthology, edited by the delightful Anna Madden.
I managed to hit Apex Magazine twice recently: once with “Wet, Dry, Bitter“, which won their monthly flash contest and is probably one of the darkest things I’ve written, and once with “The Ferns and the Fiddleheads“, a story of plant body horror and messy familial relationships. And finally, I have a story in Kaleidotrope (support them on Patreon!) called “On the Temporary Nature of Thunderstorms“, which I wrote originally as an homage to the late Dave Farland.
THE RECOMMENDATIONS PART
Okay, we’ve made it out of the shameless plugs and into the good stuff. I haven’t had time to read a ton of short fiction lately, but I have a few that I want to shout about!
First, I want to talk about a flash piece that still has not left my brain: “Then Came the Ghost of My Dead Mother, Antikleia” by Nadia Radovich. This may be cheating, because I found this one in the submissions pile, but it haunted me then and haunts me now. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking story encompassing love and loss of language and culture.
Coming from Apparition Literary Magazine‘s BLIGHT issue, Rebecca E. Treasure’s “Everything, Nothing At All, and All That’s In Between” hooked me from line one: “Patty Sue has the prettiest dirt around her ankles.” This is some of my favorite of Treasure’s work: dark without being brutal, infused with the warmth and kindness I’ve come to expect from her voice, this story will make you want its curse.
Finally, I absolutely loved Kelsea Yu’s “The Orchard of Tomorrow“, published in Clarkesworld Magazine. Steeped in Chinese legend, this is a striking story of climate collapse and broken friendship, told in the dying sun of a peach orchard that was once – and could be again – a place rich with food, unblighted by the Dragons who hoard resources for themselves.
THE LAST PART
I hope this post was as enjoyable to read as it was to write! Thanks for bearing with me, folks. I’ll do my best to get back into the swing of posting!
Leah Ning 