Greetings:
I decided to just post these all in one onslaught. I published lots of stories in 2013. Also I co-edited an anthology with Neil Gaiman! Which has some new stories in it! Which are also eligible! Yip!
SHORT STORIES
The Traditional (3824 words. Lightspeed, May 2013): Post-apocalypse collapse involving giant worms + The Gift of the Magi + J.G. Ballard’s sensibility regarding sex. What can I tell you? It’s scary. It’s hot. Also, it’s funny, out the side of its mouth. Locus gave it a Recommended and called it “extreme and audacious…sharp and intense.”
The Krakatoan (4857 words. The Lowest Heaven & Nightmare Magazine, July, 2013): A horror-y hollow-earth story involving volcano sacrifices, observatories in reverse (i.e. looking down instead of up) and a child protagonist whose astronomer father cannot see for stars. This one’s a bit of me fussing with binary gender too, as can be seen in the variety of genders assigned to my narrator in reviews. It’s also the Earth story in the Lowest Heaven, an anth of stories based on celestial objects.
Such & Such Said to So & So (4271 words, Glitter & Mayhem anthology, July 2013): Me writing noir. A cop, his ex, a speakeasy club full of sentient cocktails, and the problems of liking one’s drink too much.
The Psammophile (2213 words. Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Nov 2013): Stylistically, this is the lushest thing I published this year. it’s a riff on Thomas Browne’s Musaeum Clausum. A letter from one far-flung oddity collector to another, a catalogue of imaginary objects, and a sand-loving hourglass dwelling insect that can make time move backward and forward at will. Lois Tilton Recommended this story – and it’s also 2013 Reviews in Review List of favorites.
What You’ve Been Missing (2910 words. Apex Mag, December 2013): Literary theory, the word work of dead white men, the brain’s compartments, the way memories can be rewritten, and the last days of love and living for a long-married couple, Bette & Joe. This story has two hippocamps trotting in the oceans of Joe’s memory, along with a lot of me meditating on death and forgetting.
Moveable Beast – (2915 words, Unnatural Creatures Anthology, April 2013): this one’s a little dark lark about a wandering forest, a teenage girl, and the role of the girl and her town in managing said forest. It’s funny, sarcastic, and you know. Deals with my ongoing obsession regarding women’s societal roles and how they could be more interesting.
NOVELETTE:
In some categories this story is a novelette, but in others it’s a short. It’s a short novelette! And a long story! It’s just short fiction in some awards. But it’s 8668 words, so there you go.
BIT-U-MEN (8668 words. The Book of the Dead anth, & Lightspeed Mag, Nov, 2013): An alternate history of the 20th century twined around the origins of the Bit-U-Men bar, which is in this version, made of mellified man. 1920’s Chicago candymaking, talking mummy, confectionary cannibalism – plus a love triangle. Again with me not giving a damn about gender binaries. I don’t, as it happens. So this love triangle is a man, a woman, and a mummy. It’s a cannibal story. But it’s about true love.
ANTHOLOGY – Editor
UNNATURAL CREATURES – Anthology, HarperChildren’s, April 2013) – I co-edited this one with Neil Gaiman. The anthology itself is eligible, I think, as are the co-editors. 🙂
It’s mostly reprints of awesome stories about unnatural creatures of various descriptions, but there are a few previously unpublished items in there too. In addition to the abovenoted story of mine, Megan Kurashige’s museum transformation story The Manticore, The Mermaid & Me is new and eligible for 2013 awards. So is Nnedi Okorafor’s Ozioma the Wicked, about a 12-year-old girl who can talk to serpents.
As well, the book is illustrated gorgeously by Briony Morrow-Cribbs, and I think that might make her eligible for some things too (forgive me for my vagueness – I’m out of the country and have nothing in front of me). So check it out!
I think that’s all from 2013! If you’d like to read anything not linked, drop a comment and I’ll send you a copy.
Thank you for reading and writing and being interesting people all over the place!
M
GLITTERING SCRIVENER 