Hey, good news! Over at io9, you can read Catherynne Valente's "Days of Flaming Motorcycles" from Maurice Broaddus' Apex Books anthology Dark Faith. Reminds me a bit of Kelly Link's "The Hortlak" in all the right ways -- a melancholy, more-or-less relaxed story about zombies who are probably not mindless, tender cannibalism, and hating a place so ( Read more... )

Today's the official US release for Shine. It's available at all the usual online retailers, and should be showing up on shelves at B&N, Borders, BAM, etc. Reviewers have been pretty nice to it so far: Charles Tan and Nick Mamatas both had positive things to say, and Barnes and Noble Explorations was downright ebullient, describing my story like ( Read more... )

I meant to post this toward the beginning of the month, but January's been so busy that I haven't been good for much more than 140 characters of frantic self-documentation at a time. Oh well. Here are, belatedly, a bunch of stories I adored in 2009. I dearly hope these get some love from the various awards and Year's Best anthologies in the next ( Read more... )

My story "Salt's Father" is up on Strange Horizons. Yay! It's short and free and my first story available online, which is exciting. If you'd like to know how the father of the far-future messiah deals with undead servitors and saber-toothed dogs, you should give it a read over lunch. And if you enjoy, consider donating to Strange Horizons' fund ( Read more... )

Lawrence Conquest reviews Interzone 223...

Eric Gregory's 'The Transmigration of Aishwarya Desai' shows humanity looking for its own reflection in an alien race, with competing academics questioning the nature of what has been discovered. Gorgeously written SF, this is a dreamy and trippy piece dripping with atmosphere.
Woohoo! Excellent cap to a ( Read more... )

I love a good serialized story. Hell, I love the format so much, I'll put up with some pretty awful stories. (Heroes, say.) At their best, serials give you all the fast pace and efficiency of short stories plus the protracted character development of novels, which is awesome. But the print serial's been on life support for a while now (the ( Read more... )

First day back from vacation*: my (personal) computer is dead and there's a kids' violin class next door to my office. Milder, more predictable annoyances are magnified by those major ones -- the water is still wonky a week after the pipes were repaired, people need help that they should have asked for weeks ago, etc.

Yay.

I think I can at least ( Read more... )

Corie Ralston's "The Giving Heart" in this month's Clarkesworld is touching and fun, injecting all the gruesome charm and efficiency of a fairy tale into a contemporary sort of setting and emotional space. Reminds me of a less oblique Kelly Link story.

"I have a thing growing inside me where my heart used to be," he said. "I'm going to have it ( Read more... )

The New Yorker posted a fantastic SF short story (crazy times, these) by Israeli writer Gail Hareven. One of my favorites of 2009 -- compellingly written, unpretentious, and SFnally thought-provoking.

At least this one was similar in dimensions to our offspring. Nearly three months old. He could have been a productive adult already.

Read it here.

I like the idea of metafiction (whatever the idea in question happens to be), but I'm rarely too pumped about the execution. In actual practice, stories about the nature of story or the human drive to create or whatever else often end up dry or twee or not half as clever as the author imagines, more MFA fodder than fiction made for folks to enjoy. ( Read more... )