Category: Short Stories

Contracts are signed, so I’m thrilled to announce that my short story, “Toward Lands Uncharted,” will appear in Mind Candy Volume 1, the inaugural anthology from Myriad Paradigm publishing!

This is a brand-new publisher, but they’re professional-rate, and they’ve got a great lineup for Volume 1. The anthology concept is right up my alley: intricacies and alterations of the mind, strange psychologies and mental oddities. The anthology is mostly science fiction, but my contribution is a fantasy story. I wrote the first draft during one of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Short Story Intensive workshops, around the concept of someone with the job or title Censor of Maps.

In the real world, the drawing of borders like the Sykes-Picot line are often an exercise of blithe and terrible power. But what if that power went beyond the political, into reality itself?

Delightful news! My short story “Where the Anchor Lies” has been bought by Beneath Ceaseless Skies for their 2018 Science Fantasy month!

BCS is one of my favorite online magazines, and I’ve been hoping for quite a long time to sell something there. This is a worthy tale, I think, and I hope you’ll all agree when the time comes. I refer to it as my Sentient Battleship Romance, but in truth it’s more of a Sentient Battleship Graveyard Love Story (Inspired By Kellyanne Conway).

I am confident it’ll be the best Sentient Battleship Graveyard Love Story (Inspired By Kellyanne Conway) you read in all of 2018!

I found a brand new milestone to hit: first international translation! My August story from Compelling Science Fiction, The Setting of the Sun, has been translated into Vietnamese for the fanzine SFVN by Bao La. If you want to see what Winder looks like in Vietnamese, take a look at SFVN số 12!

Rather, not “The Setting of the Sun,” but “Mặt trời biến mất!“

Looks like I forgot to announce this in the Worldcon whirl: my short story “The Hammer’s Prayer” will be appearing in Diabolical Plots, the magazine that brings us all the almighty Submission Grinder!

I’m delighted to sell this story to one of the best new pro markets on the internet. I struggled long and hard with this tale: I had to set it aside for 4 months at one point so my subconscious could figure out how to produce an effective tale out of the theme and imagery rattling around in my head. But produce I did (with a lot of beta readers and revisions), and soon you all can read my tale of secret golems, contagious with the gift of animation.

Well, not soon. More like December 2018!

I was a Writers of the Future finalist in the most recent quarter! Go me!

It’s weird that I’m still eligible – but I am, at least for the next three days until my next story comes out. I don’t usually write WOTF-style stuff, so this is a good note to go out on!

[Edit: It turns out that, due to a technicality, I will remain eligible for a few more months. Apparently stories under a certain length (1500? 2000?) don’t count.]

Update: This post is from was my first time as finalist, in July 2017. I did not win then. As for the second time I was a finalist, in April 2018… well, read here.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve just sold “The Setting of the Sun” to Compelling Science Fiction!

Compelling is a new professional science fiction market with a focus on hard SF, and this story should fit right in: it’s full of cosmology and chronology, told from the point of view of a Dyson swarm across nine hundred million years of history.

Did I mention the story is only 1300 words long? Yeah.

Coming August 1, 2017!

I’m thrilled to announce that my flash-length science fiction story, Cyborg Shark Battle (Season 4, O’ahu Frenzy), will be appearing in the Cat’s Breakfast anthology, coming out this summer in e-book and paper from Third Flatiron Press!

It’s a small press, but they’re a pro market, and from what I hear about the table of contents, it’s going to an amazing anthology, on the theme of Kurt Vonnegut’s style and sensibility. I think my little story will fit right in, with its dry and wicked tale of the back-stage and -stabbing shenanigans among reality TV show competitors. And cyborg sharks, naturally.

I’ll be back to tell you more about it in June when the anthology comes out!