Banner with "On Sale Today" and a cover of the anthology with a list of all the contributing authors

New Story in Datlow’s Night and Day Anthology!

It’s been a wild and tough week, so I’m a few days late on this one, but I’m really excited to share that I have a story in Ellen Datlow’s Night and Day horror anthology and it’s on sale RIGHT NOW.

For those of you who might not know, Datlow is an amazing editor and a titan of assembling horror anthologies. I mean, I’m still kind of shocked that I get to share a Table of Contents with some of the best (and some of my favorite) authors in horror.

My story “The Wanting” is in the Day half of the collection, and continues to iterate on my obsession with public transportation in my fiction. Fortunately, nothing this crazy has ever happened to me on a bus.

Hope you pick up a copy and enjoy the read!

P.S. If you want to read another creepy, creepy story, can I recommended Ian Muneshwar’s “Beak“?

Strange Horizons kickstarter banner. Face in a black background with white stripes over tops

New Story: “View Window” in Strange Horizons Magazine

What happens when I try to write a literary story and fail? “View Window” is the result. It’s my newest novelette and it’s part of the Strange Horizons Summer Fundraiser Issue. (Which could use some help, if you can.)

This story wrote itself, slowly unfolding, pulling lots of inspiration from some international travel I did last year and it used some of the ideas that I could never find the right place for. Initially I wanted to tell a semi-haunted story that found joy in language, but it kept getting stranger. So here we are.

It was a difficult, but fun piece to write.

My soundtracks for this one were Movement VII by Robert Koch, Julien Marchal and Highgate by Shearwater

This story is different that what I normally write, but I’m proud of how it pushed my skills. I hope you enjoy too!

My short story recommendation this time is “The Angel Azrael Rode Into The Town of Burnt Church on a Dead Horse” by Peter Darbyshire

Cover of June 2025 Issue of Clarkesworld Magazine

New Story: “In the Shells of Broken Things” at Clarkesworld!

Time has been a strange and warped lens these last few years. I didn’t realize it until finished this story and I looked at my submission history that I hadn’t sent a story to Clarkesworld in four years. In my mind, it had only been a year or two.

Which is all to say, I’m so thrilled to have a story published in Clarkesworld Magazine again! This one is called “In the Shells of Broken Things” and it took me a while to get it right. It was one of those stories where I didn’t know what it wanted to be for many drafts. But oh man, when the story finally came together, it was one of those moments that make writing worth all the work.

I based the protagonist disability on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and Long COVID, neither of which I have. So, I needed to do a bunch of research for this story and get some sensitivity readers to go over it. I also got feedback from a friend dealing with a long term injury who gave me suggestions for emotional beats.

My point is, even when you have a disability, you still have to do the work to get it right in your art.

My soundtrack for this story was “Be On Your Way” by Daughter. (Yes, I have my favorite writing bands.)

And if you’d like to check out some stories about characters with ME/CFS/Long COVID by writers with ME/CFS/Long COVID, I recommend:

Hope you enjoy the story!

Black and white paper cutout of a rocket ship in a sea of stars.

New Story: “Adventures on the Omega Train at Night” at Sunday Morning Transport

It’s been a few months since I updated this blog, but that’s about to change. I’ve been writing a ton recently and this is the first of a series of stories that are coming out in the next few weeks in a variety of places.

As of this morning, “Adventures on the Omega Train at Night” is now live over at Sunday Morning Transport. You’ll need to sign up to read it, but this is a link for a free 60-day access to the magazine. https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/smt2024

This was a fun story to write – the seed of the idea came to me when my friend and I were trying to get home after an event in Manhattan and the train went express midway through the trip. And I said “Well that’s we get for taking the train after 10pm, you can never guess where you’ll end up.”

I’m trying not to write too many stories inspired by NYC, but this one wouldn’t leave me alone. So many of the little details are pulled from real life and places as well as the awful comments from strangers. (Which, fortunately, didn’t happened all in one night.)

My soundtrack for this story was “Things Behind Things Behind Things” by Bon Iver.

Enjoy!

P.S. My story recommendation this time is Butterfly Pavilion by G. Willow WIlson

Cover of Uncanny Magazine Issue 62

New Essay + An Anthology Announcement

So, I mentioned in my year end wrap up in December that 2025 was shaping up to be an exciting publication year. I also said that there were a few things I couldn’t announce publicly yet.

Well, I can’t announce everything, but I’m happy to share that my essay “Accessibility Toolkit for When Things Go Wrong” is now live over at Uncanny Magazine! It’s about what to do when an accessibility plan for an event doesn’t work as you expect. It pulls from examples that I’ve seen or heard about over the years.

The second piece of news – which I’m thrilled about – is that I’m going to have a story in an Ellen Datlow’s Night & Day anthology! The anthology is model after the old Ace double features were one half of the book would have one novel and then if you flip and rotate the book 180 degrees, there would be another. My story, “The Wanting”, will be in the “Day” half and the company it keeps in this entire anthology is pretty amazing. It will be hitting shelves on September 2nd, 2025!

More news coming soon (I think), but I’ll leave you with this short story recommendation in the meantime: “They Bought a House” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu over at Nightmare Magazine.

New Story “Between Home and a House on Fire”

Technically, this came out yesterday, but yesterday I was busy. Fortunately, the story hasn’t changed since then.

Thrilled to share that “Between Home and a House on Fire” is now published on Reactor (formally Tor.com

This is a special one to me. It’s about the strange complexity of emotions you have as look back at your past self. It was originally based off a failed Choose Your Own Adventure style flash piece I tried a few years ago, but it became much more in the reshaping and combination of other ideas.

I’m very grateful to Jonathan Strahan and the Tor.com team for giving this one a good home.

My soundtrack for this story was “The Fall” by Gregory Alan Isakov

Asimov’s Guest Editorial and Locus Award Voting

This is going to be a very quick post because I really want to finish revising a chapter of my novella this morning. So, two speedy, but exciting announcements!

  1. I wrote about what it’s like to be an engineer at a vertical farm for a guest editorial in Asimov’s Magazine May/June 2024 issue! You can read it here. This is the first time my engineering career and my writing career have crossed paths.
  2. Waystation City” is on the Locus Awards Reading List and you can vote for it here until April 15th! This story was originally published in Uncanny Magazine and was picked up for podcast by LeVar Burton Reads last December. There’s so much great work on this list and I’m thrilled to have this story among them.

Okay, I’m heading back to my imaginary world. Have a wonderful Sunday!

New Story “Mindfulness and the Machine” in Lightspeed Magazine

One last post in 2023 to wrap up an exciting month of publishing news. I’m happy to share that a new short story is now up and free to read over at Lightspeed Magazine. It’s called “Mindfulness and the Machine” and it was one of the only things I was able to write in my first six months in NYC. I talk a little more about that in this essay and I also have an Author Spotlight interview to go along with the story.

My short fiction recommendation this time is a story from the same issue To The Waters and the Wild by Izzy Wasserstein.

I hope 2024 will be a safe, healthy year for you, and a little more joyful too. Happy New Year and as always, thank you for reading.

Story on LeVar Burton Reads and New Essay Up at Locus!

I’ve been sharing this news on social media this week, but am only now getting around to writing a blog post about it.

First, I’m thrilled to share that my story “Waystation City” is featured on the latest episode of LeVar Burton Reads! For those who aren’t familiar with this podcast, Mr. Burton handpicks and reads twelve different short stories every season. As someone who has been a longtime fan of the podcast and of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I was absolutely floored when I found out this story was selected for Season 12 of the show.

“Waystation City” was originally published in Uncanny Magazine earlier this year.

Second, I’m also happy to share that the essay I wrote for Locus Magazine’s special short fiction issue is now free to read online. It’s called “Writing Short Stories in the Margins“. It’s about how short stories were the perfect art form for me when I started writing and how that opportunity is under threat for newer writers. Unfortunately, many SFF magazines can still use some help staying afloat and if you’d like to do so, here’s a good list to start from.

I’ve fallen off the wagon with adding these to the end of my posts lately, but my short fiction recommendation this time is The Sound of Children Screaming by Rachael K. Jones. (Warning it’s seriously dark, but timely and potent. CW:  Gun violence, child death, child endangerment.)

Thanks for reading!

New Essay Up at Fantasy Magazine

I wanted to put a quick post up today that I have a new essay online at Fantasy Magazine. It’s called “More Than A Journey” and it’s about storytelling that’s shaped by more than one character. I’m thrilled to have a piece in this magazine. I’ve adored Fantasy Magazine’s fiction and essays and I’m heartbroken that they are closing shop in October.

If you read or care about SFF short fiction, please subscribe to some magazines so that this doesn’t happen to others venues. Here’s a list of some you can support.

One last note, I made a mistake on my last post. I’ll be reading at Story Hour tomorrow, August 30th at 7pm PST, NOT Thursday.