Sunday Shorts: January Birthdays

I decided to try something new for 2026: when I’m aware of an author’s birthday, I want to celebrate it by reading a short story or two by that author, preferably (although not always practicably) on their actual birthday. Here’s who I’ve celebrated this way so far in January:

Image of Frosty the Snowman, with his top hat and corn-cob pipe, from the classic cartoon, with the banner HAPPY BIRTHDAY

 January 4:

Chaz Brenchley -- “The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coal” from his collection Everything in All The Wrong Order

January 5:

Seanan McGuire -- “The Invisible Event” from the Author’s Patreon page and “Persephone” from the anthology Nevertheless She Persisted: Flash Fiction Project

Tananarive Due -- “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge” from her collection The Wishing Pool and Other Stories

January 8:

Richard Bowes -- “So Many Miles to the Heart of a Child” from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction #561 (April 1998)

January 12:

Jack London -- “The Red One” from the anthology Voices From the Radium Age.

January 13:

Ken Scholes -- “First Bar at the End of the Day” and “Making My Entrance Again With My Usual Flair” from his collection Better Dreams, Fallen Seeds and Other Handfuls of Hope

Horatio Alger -- “John Stevenson's Good Fortune” from the Horatio Alger Society Website

Clark Ashton Smith -- “The End of the Story” from the anthology Vampire Tales: The Big Collection

Ron Goulart -- “The Adventure of the Clockwork Men” from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction #721

Beth Cato (Not sure if this is her actual birthday as only one site mentions it) -- “Minor Hockey Gods of Barstow Station” from her collection Red Dust and Dancing Horses and Other Stories

January 14:

Carlos Hernandez -- “The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria” from his collection The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria

January 15:

Robert Silverberg -- “A Tip on a Turtle” from the anthology Playing Games

January 18:

Daniel Jose Older -- “The Collector” from his collection Salsa Nocturna: Stories

January 19:

Edgar Allan Poe -- “The Purloined Letter” from the Library of America volume Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales

January 22:

Stephen Graham Jones -- “Hell on the Homefront Too” from the anthology Giving The Devil His Due: Special Edition

Robert E. Howard -- “The Hills of the Dead” from the anthology Vampire Tales: The Big Collection

January 25:

William Meikle -- “The Fortingall Yew” from the anthology A Winter’s Tale: Horror Stories For The Yuletide

January 26:

Philip Jose Farmer -- “J.C. on the Dude Ranch” from his collection Riverworld and Other Stories

January 28:

Carrie Vaughn -- “Alchemy” from the anthology Nevertheless She Persisted: Flash Fiction Project

Even with that many authors identified and read, I’m sure I missed some. So, reader — tell me who! With the caveat that the authors you name have to have written at least one short story. I don’t have the capacity right now to read full novels by authors in honor of their birthdays, and I’m not currently planning on including non-fiction (articles or essays) in this project.

I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.

SUNDAY SHORTS: 2025 RoundUp, Part 1

Here’s a list of all the short stories I read in the first half of 2025. I decided to break them up by month and then within each month by where they were published, with links where appropriate and available.

JANUARY

Lightspeed Magazine #176, edited by John Joseph Adams

“Tell Them A Story To Teach Them Kindness” by B. Pladek

“The Exquisite Pull of Relentless Desire” by Will McMahon

“Dyson Spheres of the Vaba Cluster” by Filip Hajdar Drnovsek Zorko

“After the God Has Moved On” by Kate Elliott

“A Heap of Petrified Gods” by Adelehin Ijasan

“Bone and Marrow Woven Into Song” by Neon Yang

“I Eat the Sky For Us” by Vijayalaxmi Samal

“Chickenfoot Soup” by Marika Bailey

Uncanny #62 edited by Lynne Thomas and Michael Damien Thomas

“Kaiju Agonistes” by Scott Lynch

“Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson

Janie's Got A Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Aerosmith ed. by Michael Bracken

“Sight For Sore Eyes” by John C. Bruening

Pulp Reality #5 edited by Charles F. Millhouse and Mary Ann Millhouse

“No Quarter” by Jim Beard

Nightmare #148 edited by Wendy N. Wagner

“The Morning Room” by Katharine Tyndall

“They Bought a House” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu

“Karabasan” by Leyla Hamedi

Captain America: The Shield of Sam Wilson edited by Jesse J. Holland

“Everyone's Hero” by Maurice Broaddus

“Exclusive Content” by Sheree Renee Thomas

The Dark #116 edited by Sean Wallace

“Four Questions with Something Like God” by Carlie St. George

“In the Blue Room” by Orrin Grey

“Lost You Again” by Ian Rogers

“Coffin Dancing” by Chris Kuriata

Do Not Go Quietly edited by Jason Sizemore & Leslie Connor

“Kill The Darlings (Silicone Sisters Remix)” by E. Catherine Tobler

Strange Locations edited by Marissa Van Uden

“See the Empress of Yesteryear!” by Violet Marr

“Echoes of Toyland on the Harmonic Coast” by Daisy Lyle

“The Ephemeral Conservatory of Dr. Carmen Sol Echeverria” by Silvathcus Riddle

“A Plea to Our Readers” by Steve Neal

“Those Who Stand Beneath Sagrada” by Akis Linardos

“For the Pilgrims of Mary Magdalena” by Salena Casha

“Late Exhibition” by Guilherme Vieira

“The Theatre Meridian” by Nicholas Jay

“Heroica” by Andrew Kao

“If Nothing, The Cloud Remembers” by Mwenya S. Chikwa

“The People's Republic of You” by Gordon Brown

You Glow In the Dark (single author collection)

“The Cave” by Liliana Colanzi (trans. by Chris Andrews)

“Atomito” by Liliana Colanzi (trans. by Chris Andrews)

FEBRUARY

Lightspeed Magazine #177, edited by John Joseph Adams

“It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand” by Lowry Poletti

“Books to Take At the End of the World” by Carolyn Ives Gilman

“My Girlfriend is a Nebula” by David DeGraff

“An Omodest Proposal” by Andrew Dana Hudson

“Standardized Test” by Seoung Kim

“Some to Cradle, Some to Eat” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

“What We Don't Know About Angels” by Kristina Ten

You Glow In the Dark (single author collection)

“The Debt” by Liliana Colanzi (trans. by Chris Andrews)

“Chaco” by Liliana Colanzi (trans. by Chris Andrews)

“The Greenest Eyes” by Liliana Colanzi (trans. by Chris Andrews)

“The Narrow Way” by Liliana Colanzi (trans. by Chris Andrews)

“You Glow in the Dark” by Liliana Colanzi (trans. by Chris Andrews)

Dark Corners (Amazon short story collection, editor unknown)

“The Sleep Tight Motel” by Lisa Unger

Strange Locations edited by Marissa Van Uden

“The Urban Explorer: Site 1337” by Sam W. Pisciotta

“Wiki.StrangePlaces/TheLeaningSlabGallery” by Sarena Ulibarri

“Summer's Crimson Shadow” by Jonathan Wood

“A Review of the Myrkvi Black Sand Beach Tours” by Dale Rappineau

“Visitors' Guide: Personal Hygiene on Jones Atoll” by Kay Vaindal

“Fecal-Oral Tours Presents: Anusha's Bed and Breakfast” by Nina Miller

Nightmare #149 edited by Wendy N. Wagner

“God of the Black Moon” by Dan Stintzi

Clarkesworld #220 edited by Neil Clarke

“When There Are Two of You: A Documentary” by Zun Yu Tan

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #424 edited by Scott H. Andrews

“Late Autumn on the Pilgrim's High Road” by Samuel Jensen

“The Garden Must Thrive” by Anaea Lay

The Deadlands Winter 2025 edited by E. Catherine Tobler

“Extreme Sports Club for Octogenarians” by Kate Lechler

Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2025 edited by Robert Greenberger

“57 Seconds” by Christopher Priest

“Doc Dresden and the Lost Hollow” by Bobby Nash

“The Collar” by Charles Ardai

“She-Devil of Paris” by Win Scott Eckert

“Stories You Tell When You Get to Hell” by Paul Kupperberg

“Goldmark's Universe” by Elliot S! Maggin

“The Game of Wons and Toos” by Michael Jan Friedman

“The Thing in the Crate” by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

“The Bonds of Friendship” by Aaron Rosenberg

“The Tale of the Never Be” by Dan Abnett

“My Crush” by William F. Wu

“Gnat” by Russ Colchamiro

“Zayne Stormrunner and the Prince of Saturn” by Mary Fan

“ESPD” by Hildy Silverman

“Grey” by Liz Braswell

MARCH

Lightspeed Magazine #178, edited by John Joseph Adams

“Dekar Druid and the Infinite Library” by Cadwell Turnbull

“Those Who Seek to Embrace the Sun” by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe

“Message in a Babel” by Adam-Troy Castro

“Instructions for Good Boys on the Interplanetary Expedition” by Rachael K. Jones

“Pure of Heart” by Jake Kerr

“Memories of Temperance” by Anya Ow

“The Shift” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

“The Lexicon of Lethe” by Sunwoo Jeong

Seanan McGuire’s Patreon

“Chide the Waves” by Seanan McGuire

Uncanny #63 edited by Lynne Thomas and Michael Damien Thomas

“10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days” by Samantha Mills

“Butterfly Pavilion” by G. Willow Wilson

“Red, Scuttle When the Ships Come Down” by Wen-yi Lee

Clarkesworld #222 edited by Neil Clarke

“From Enceladus, with Love” by Ryan Cole

Strange Horizons February 2025 ed. by Joyce Chng, Dante Luiz, Hebe Stanton, Kathryn Weaver and Aigner Loren Wilson

“Ticket po mamser” by Caroline Hung

Nightmare #150 edited by Wendy N. Wagner

“sharp house” by Samir Sirk Morato

Strange Locations edited by Marissa Van Uden

“1 Star, March 15th 2022” by M. Lopes da Silva

“Prometheus Live” by Sasha Brown

“The Food Truck at the Corner of the Street Where I Live That Everybody Sys is Overrated But Eat at Anyway” by Sek Han Foo

“A Disappointing Experience After 'Unintentionally' Consuming a Bioluminescent Mushroom in the Glow Wood” by Rachel Ashcraft

“A Travel Advisory For Your Past” by Ende Mac

“Welcome to Resurrection Lodge” by Chris Clemens

“Exploring the Tangents of Indus: The Mad Omnivorous Ruins of Lakir” by Amayah Perveen

“Ghost Tours of Eaden Marsh” by Marie Croke

“Ephemera” by Derrick Boden

“The-Town-Where-All-the-Residents-Are-Saints” by Avra Margariti

“Greendam” by Kurt Fawver

“Welcome Home - An Art Tour of Your New Apartment” by Ashley K. Frantik

“A Walk Down Emberley Road” by Amanda Van Rhyn

The Dark #118 edited by Sean Wallace

“Malo Malo Malo Malo” by Louis Inglis Hall

The Deadlands Winter 2025 edited by E. Catherine Tobler

“His Love's Ashes On His Tongue” by Monte Lin

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #427 edited by Scott H. Andrews

“Bind the Herbs to Bring the Shift” by R.Z. Held

Installment Immortality (InCryptid novel)

“Mourner's Waltz” by Seanan McGuire

Shivers Collection (Amazon Originals), editor unknown

“Jackknife” by Joe Hill

Kaleidotrope Winter 2025 edited by Fred Coppersmith

“The Diamond Mountain” by Helen De Cruz

“Once, Now, Always” by Ire Coburn

Apex Magazine #148 edited by Jason Sizemore

“One By One” by Lindz McLeod

APRIL

Lightspeed Magazine #179, edited by John Joseph Adams

“Does Harlan Lattner Dream of Infected Sheep” by Sarah Langan

“Meditations From the Event Horizon” by Deborah L. Davitt

“Talk: "The Siren Song of the Otherworld Goggles”” by Domenica Phettleplace

“To Navigate the Night” by Rich Larson

“The Price of Miracles” by Nigel Faustino

“The Potter, His Daughter, and the Boy with Tribal Marks On His Face” by Oyedotun Damilola Muess

“The Other River” by John Lasser

Stand-Alone E-Book

“The Bee Wife” by Francesca Forrest

Kaleidotrope Winter 2025 edited by Fred Coppersmith

“Hidden Meaning” by Lindsey Duncan

MAY

Lightspeed Magazine #180, edited by John Joseph Adams

“Rthing It Up: An Oral History” by Gene Doucette

“The Temporal Displacement of the Graves” by Russel Nichols

“Through the Machine” by P.A. Cornell

“The Meaning We Seek” by Nancy Kress

“Shadows on the Pavement” by R.P. Sand

“The Price of Manners” by Martin Cahill

“Ninnagan Says Remember” by Jonathan Olfert

Nightmare #152 edited by Wendy N. Wagner

“Beak” by Ian Muneshwar

Amplitudes: Tales of Queer and Trans Futurity edited by Lee Mandelo

“The Republic of Ecstatic Consent” by Sam J. Miller

“Trans World Takeover” by Nat X Ray

“The Orgasm Doula” by Colin Dean

“The Shabbos Bride” by Esther Alter

“MoonWife” by Sarah Gailey

“Forever Won't End Like This” by Dominique Dickey

“They Will Give Us a Home” by Wen-yi Lee

“There Used to Be Peace” by Margaret Killjoy

“Fettle & Sunder” by Ramez Yoakeim

“Six Days” by Bendi Barrett

The Bloody Chamber (single-author collection)

“The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter

“The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” by Angela Carter

“The Tiger's Bride” by Angela Carter

“Puss-in-Boots” by Angela Carter

“The Snow Child” by Angela Carter

JUNE

Lightspeed Magazine #181, edited by John Joseph Adams

“The Twenty-One Second God” by Peter Watts

“Multi-Spatial Apartment Complex Malfunction Results in Body Horror” by Reyes Ramirez

“See Now the Misfortune of the Thinking Tenax” by Lowry Poletti

“All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” by Marissa Lingen

“Eyes Grown Thick on the World” by Will McMahon

“When the Faerie King Toured the Human Realm” by Vanessa Fogg

“A Week at the Raven Feather Salon” by Carrie Vaughn

“My Mother, the Supervillain” by Benjamin Blattberg

Amplitudes: Tales of Queer and Trans Futurity edited by Lee Mandelo

“The They Whom We Remember” by Sunny Moraine

“When the Devil Comes From Babylon” by Maya Deane

“Copper Boys” by Jamie McGhee

“A Few Degrees” by Ash Huang

“Where The World Goes Sharp and Quiet” by Ewen Ma

“Circular Universe” by Ta-wei Chi (trans. Ariel Chu)

“The Garden of Collective Memory” by Neon Yang

“Sugar, Shadows” by Aysha U. Farah

“A Step Into Emptiness” by Aiki Mira (trans. by CD Covington)

“pocket futures in the present past” by Katharine Duckett

“Bang Bang” by Meg Elison

Apex Magazine Bonus Issue #1 edited by Jason Sizemore

“The Swap” by Lavie Tidhar

Nightmare #153 edited by Wendy N. Wagner

“Here I Go Again” by Lindz McLeod

“Eleven Songs for Another Lover” by V.H. Chen

“Edgar Addison, the Author of Devorer (1862 - 1933)” by Ben Peek

Strange Horizons May 2025 ed. by Joyce Chng, Dante Luiz, Hebe Stanton, Kathryn Weaver and Aigner Loren Wilson

“Everything We Lost in the Apocalypse” by Mar Vincent

Kaleidotrope Spring 2025 edited by Fred Coppersmith

“Mabinogion” by Katie McIvor

Seanan McGuire’s Patreon

“What's Fair to Offer in Exchange” by Seanan McGuire

The Dark #121 edited by Sean Wallace

“The Death of Abigail Goudy” by Neil Williamson

Amazon Original Stories (editor unknown)

“Abscond” by Abraham Verghese

Clarkesworld #225 edited by Neil Clarke

“Emily of Emerald Starship” by Ng Yi-Sheng

Sunday Morning Transport edited by Julian Yap and Fran C. Wilde

“Welcome 2 the Freedom Galaxy” by Maurice Broaddus

And there’s the first half of 2025! Tune in next week for the list of stories I read in July through December of 2025.

Sunday Shorts: AMPLITUDES

TITLE: Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity

EDITOR: Lee Mandelo

360 pages, Erewhon Books, ISBN 9781645660866 (paperback, e-book)

MY RATING: Recommended*

REVIEW: In Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, editor Lee Mandelo has brought together a thought-provoking and exciting set or stories that look at what the future (near and further out) might look like for queer people, written by authors whose lived experience falls all along the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Some of these stories are brightly hopeful, some cautiously optimistic. Some tackle the repercussions of today’s backlash against the LGBTQIA+ community (and in particular, the attacks on Trans people). Some few even put the sexual aspect of our sexuality and culture at the forefront. All of the stories focus on characters solving problems – some of those problems being self-made, and some being societal. Many of them also comment on the nature of society to take advantage of the disadvantaged, the grieving, the lonely. As with all multi-author anthologies, not every story will work for every reader. The stories I loved, you may not, and vice versa. But I think there’s something in here to spark the interest and attention of every reader of science fiction.

Here are my thoughts on just a few of the stories contained in Amplititudes:

Sarah Gailey’s “Moonwife” explores what happens to our digital existence after we die. Our lives have already become increasingly digital, every aspect of our personalities online someplace. That digital footprint doesn’t just disappear when we die. Gailey posits a world where the seances and mediums of the past do their work digitally as well; it’s almost the same as contacting an actual spirit. And as there always is when technology and grieving people are concerned, there’s always someone willing and able to use the former to take advantage of the latter. As always with what I’ve read of Gailey’s work, there is a huge emotional punch at the center of the story, and a catharsis.

“Six Days” by Bendi Barrett is a more dystopian tale of community surviving the fall of civilization, in which even the smallest actions and absences have consequences. “There’s no better world that we don’t make ourselves,” one of the characters says in a contemplative moment. While the setting is dystopian, the mood of the story is quiet even in the moments fraught with danger. I was surprised at how the emotional underpinnings of the story snuck up on me. This may have been the first story by Barrett I’ve read; I sincerely hope it won’t be the last.

It took me a little while to really understand what was happening in Sunny Moraine’s “The They Whom We Remember,” and that appears to be by design of the author. Moraine is very effective at throwing the reader into the middle of a character’s dilemma and then mixing the character’s past and present together to fully reveal how that dilemma came about and how it is resolved. The story has a lot to say about internal identity and kept me guessing, in a good way, about what is going on with the main character and the world they live in.

“Sugar, Shadows” by Aysha U. Farah melds science fiction with classic private eye tropes. The narrator is tasked with finding a missing young man for his rich parents. Which proves to be easy enough – and then becomes increasingly complicated. I loved the way the story spooled out, both the mystery and the world-building. I also found what the story has to say about addiction (both the disease itself and those who prey on and take advantage of the addicted) thought-provoking.

Meg Elison’s “Bang Bang” is part tribute to the B-52s’s “Love Shack,” part dissection of club culture. It’s fast and punchy and hopeful without being trite. I had to reread it several times just to make sure I got all of the nods to one of the most infectious songs ever written, and to wring every bit of emotional nuance out of the text. It’s one of the shorter stories in the collection, but as the final entry, it encompasses so much of what the anthology is trying (and succeeding) at doing.

Anthologies like this, presenting a mix of established and emerging LGBTQIA+ writers looking to our future while acknowledging our present, are so vital. And as I said, there’s surely something (and more than one something) for everyone in the community, and for our allies.

 I’ve previously reviewed Lee Mandeo’s novel Summer Sons and novella Feed Them Silence.

*I have moved away from a star-based rating system here on the blog (I can’t avoid using stars on Goodreads, NetGalley, and the various bookseller sites). Instead I am switching to ranking books as “highly recommended,” “recommended,” “satisfactory” and “not right for me.” I may add other levels as I refine this concept.

I received an electronic advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. I received and read the book before the publication date but fell behind on positing reviews. Amplitudes was released on May 27, 2025, and is available now wherever books are sold.

I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.

Sunday Shorts: The Shivers

TITLE: The Shivers

AUTHORS: various

194 pages, Amazon Originals, (e-book and audiobook)

MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5

REVIEW: The five short stories in Amazon’s The Shivers collection all capably fulfill the promise of the collection’s title: they all made me shiver at least once, and most more than that. While they all have some supernatural element (some slowly revealed, some blatant from the start, and mostly all in the form of ghostly presences of some kind), they are mostly absent of jump scares and gore. They are more on the suspenseful side of horror, an interesting blend of the psychological and the supernatural. All of the stories have a grounding in the everyday that is slowly (or, as slowly as one can in a short story) infused with dread and then outright horror.

In Joe Hill’s “Jackknife,” a disgraced college professor at loose ends slowly realizes there is something not right about the tree from which he recently removed a rusted old jackknife. In Stephen Graham Jones’ “The Indigo Room,” a dramatic office presentation turns dark, eerie, and prophetic. Grady Hendrix’s “The Blanks” takes place in an almost too idyllic island summer community whose secrets are hinted at before being revealed, while Catriona Ward’s “Day and Night in Misery” tweaks the haunted hotel room trope in a most moving way. The collection concludes with “Letter Slot” by Owen King, focused on a teen boy living in poverty on the same road as an abandoned McMansion to which he is inexorably drawn.

While I’ve read stories or novels by Joe Hill, Owen King, Stephen Graham Jones, and Grady Hendrix (but only one short story in Hendrix’s case), this was my first exposure to Catriona Ward’s work, and her story (like the others) definitely made me want to read more (readers, feel free to recommend what Ward book I should read next!). All five authors understood the assignment here and delivered on it. Hill’s story is probably the most outright horror/least suspenseful. Jones’s is absolutely the most surreal and otherworldly. Hendrix’s is the creepiest. Ward’s and King’s tie for the title of “most tugged at my heart.” I enjoyed all five stories and can’t stress enough how much each creeped me out.

For four of these stories, the sense of dread works so well because the authors make you care about the main characters through personal moments or traits or reminiscences that resonate. Suspense is more suspenseful, horror is more horrific, when you care about the characters who are in danger. I found the main character of the Hill story to be thoroughly unlikeable and thus less sympathetic but found the other protagonists to be relatable. Interestingly, three of those main characters are mothers of young children who are in some sort of danger, while the fourth is a teenage boy with a sick mother (a natural reversal of the caregiver/cared-for roles).

Fair warning for those who might need it: both the Ward and Hendrix stories involve child death. Both happen “off screen” but are recounted in enough detail that it may upset some people.

I received an advance electronic reading copy of this book for free via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. The Shivers is available now in e-book and audiobook format only from Amazon, and can be purchased as individual titles or as a bundle.

I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.

Sunday Shorts: SLOW BURN

TITLE: Slow Burn

AUTHOR: Mike Allen

278 pages, Mythic Delirium Books, ISBN 9781956522037 (paperback; also e-book)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Slow Burn, Mike Allen’s latest short story collection, is another tour-de-force mix of body horror, existential dread, and yes, I’ll say it again as I did for his previous collection, mind-fuckery (in the best possible sense of the word). Allen’s stories, even the dark fantasy entries, are grounded in a gritty reality that then veers into increasingly disturbing imagery. Even when his stories start with a sense of dread or an unsettling moment, Allen’s talent for grounding the reader before pulling the rug out from under is on full display.

Allen’s stories are character driven, wherein lies another of his talents: revealing the interiority of a character with sometimes just a sentence or two. Whether the story is set in the small town here-and-now of southwestern Virginia or a fantasy world, the horror is heightened because the characters, or their wants/needs, are recognizable and relatable. The main characters also tend to be common people – middle class or lower – rather than rich or famous, dealing with horrors that encroach on their ability to get a job, keep a job, or get home to a loved one.

In “Falling Is What It Loves,” a daughter tries to come to peace with the complicated relationship she had with her father after his death from cancer with the aid of a supernatural (or possibly alien?) creature called a “roommate.” Is the roommate somehow the main character’s conscience or internal monologue personified? Does every person on Earth have a “roommate”? The story opens up, but does not easily answer, questions about guilt and communication and generational trauma. Generational trauma is also at the core of “The Feather Stitch,” in which a grandmother’s search for her missing grandson leads her to a craft shop with a demonic connection – but generational understanding and familial magic also play their role in a dark story with a (hopefully) hopeful ending.

My two favorite stories in the collection share a theme: how secrets revealed can cause a life, and a person’s sense of self, to fall apart. In “The Butcher, The Baker,” Trukos’ life is simple: kill whoever Auntie Mayya tells him to, in defense of her baking empire. Until the day when Trukos kills someone he wasn’t ordered to and the magic driving him begins to unravel. (Is it spoilery to say this is the darkest take on both the titular fairy tale and “the gingerbread man” that I’ve ever read? Possibly. Sorry.). In “Gherem,” (co-authored with Charles M. Saplak), the titular character, injured in battle, is tasked with carrying an angry witch back to their homeland with the prize that had been battled for before enemy forces catch up to them – but neither Gherem, nor the witch, nor the reason for the battle, are what they at first seem.

The collection also includes horror, or horror-tinged, poems. I feel in no way qualified to review poetry, so all I’ll say is that like the short stories, the poems range from the subtly eerie to full-bore horror.

I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.

Sunday Shorts: Three from Autumn Cthulhu

Editor Mike Davis takes a line from H.P. Lovecraft’s story “Polaris” (“And in the autumn of the year, when the winds from the north curse and whine, and the red-leaved trees of the swamp mutter things to one another in the small hours of the morning under the horned waning moon…”) and uses it as the core principal of the anthology Autumn Cthulhu (Lovecraft ezine Press, 2016). Here are my thoughts on a few of the stories contained therein:

cover image by andreiuc88

“In the Spaces Where You Once Lived” by Damien Angelica Walters

Helena and Jack, a couple in their retirement years, live in a house that backs up onto a beautiful forest. Jack is falling victim to dementia/Alzheimer’s and Helen is struggling to accept the slow loss of her husband and to cope with the changes in his personality. Jack is convinced this house is not his home, that his home is elsewhere: perhaps somewhere in the woods. Walters’ story balances a very real fear (Jack’s health and eventual full loss of memory and cognitive function) with a slow-growing dread that something is very wrong in the woods. Of course, something is, or this wouldn’t be a Lovecraftian story. The relationship between Helena and Jack is drawn so indelibly by Walters, it is easy to see the love that underpins the strangeness and discomfort; scenes with their child and grandchild add to both the poignancy of Jack’s situation and the tension of the mystery of the woods. Helena does eventually learn what’s lurking just out of sight and why it is affecting Jack – but thankfully the author does not use it as an explanation for Jack’s declining mental acuity. That would have been a bit too precious for an otherwise realistic look at the horror of Alzheimer’s and similar diseases.

“The Black Azalea” by Wendy N. Wagner

The protagonist of Wagner’s story is Candace, a recent widow whose marriage to Graham was not a happy one especially in the later years. Before he passed, Graham had planted an azalea bush in the shadow of an elm tree that succumbed to Dutch elm disease, leaving room for sunlight to kill the azalea. The dead azalea blocks Candace’s view of her garden, so she decides on the last nice day of autumn to dig the bush out. Which is when she discovers strange rot at the bush’s core … strange rot that seems to be incredibly contagious to all the other plant life on Candace’s property. And eventually to more than just the plants. Wagner is an expert at moving a story from subtle unease to full out horror, and “The Black Azalea” is yet another example of that skill. The story also does not skimp on characterization in favor of horror; Candace’s life as a widow, and her life before becoming a widow, are just as central to the story as the rot is (and, in fact, I began to consider that this (supernatural? extraterrestrial?) rot is something of a metaphor for the course of Candace and Graham’s marriage.

“A Shadow Passing” by Daniel Mills

“A Shadow Passing” is one of the most fever dream-like short stories I have read in recent memory. A young boy’s mother leaves their house each day, dressed in widow’s black, to track down “them” – winged batlike shadows that speak to her, taunt her, are leading her to something. Something the boy seems tied to, with his strange fevers. Something the boy’s aunts and grandfather don’t seem to want him to be a part of, seeking medical assistance for him while his mother is away. Mills’ prose is perfect for the story’s overall sense of disconnection from logical reality, of a sick child’s inability to understand why the adults in his life seem to be at odds, of the way fevers especially steal time from us and cause us to hallucinate. I might have been reading too much into the story, but it also feels like an investigation of how adults who get caught up in cults will sacrifice everything, potentially even their own children, for the sake of their new beliefs – and how difficult it is for family members outside the cult to save the ones who have been sucked in.

I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.

Sunday Shorts: Two From Women in Practical Armor

In 2016, Ed Greenwood and Gabrielle Harbowy edited Women in Practical Armor, an anthology of fantasy short stories focused on female warriors while avoiding the trope of skimpy armor. Here are my thoughts on a couple of the stories contained therein.

cover image by Nneirda, design by Eloise Knapp

“No Better Armor, No Heavier Burden” by Wunji Lau

Rose, an older woman with a mysterious past, has settled quietly in a small town in the shadow of a mountain with strange properties called the Blacktooth, where weather does not work the way it does in the rest of Ara. Only one person in town knows anything of her past at all, including that she has two estranged adult sons. The story begins with Rose running towards the town Inn because she’s heard there’s trouble, and only upon arrival does she discover one of her sons, Zaian, being held at swordpoint by Leian (a nearby country) soldiers. From there, the story gains complexity as an excellently written fight scene reveals what Rose and her opponents are capable of along with some of Rose’s secrets (and her son’s). But it’s not all non-stop fighting; the conflict between Rose and the people who want to take Zaian in for a crime he possibly didn’t commit also becomes something of a battle of personality and will. I loved Rose’s personality (take charge, take no bullshit, take chances). Her first-person narrative voice is personable and irascible; her relationship with Zaian is not smooth but still loving as she struggles with why he’s been estranged and why he’s lying to her now. The world building surrounding the characters is really great: the Blacktooth is home to weird energy fluctuations that affect not just the weather but the way magic works. I really want to know more about Rose, Zaian, and the countries of Ara and Lei and the religion of the Steersman.

“The Bound Man” by Mary Robinette Kowal

In Li Reiko’s society, women are the warriors and leaders, while men are the homemakers and scribes. Li Reiko herself is a noted leader and warrior, with two young children: a daughter who will someday be a warrior as well, and a son whose interest in martial arts needs to be dissuaded because it distracts him from honing the skills he’ll need to keep the Histories. Despite her society’s dictates, Li Reiko plays a version of hide-and-seek with her kids that fosters both children’s abilities and awareness. Elsewhere, Halldór, a warrior-priest, struggles to bring the sword of the Chooser of the Slain back to his people’s Parliament while his Duke and the rest of the party that found the legendary sword fall to a bandit raiding party. Halldór chants a rune of power that will bring the Chooser of the Slain from the realm of the gods to the world of men … and Li Reiko is torn from her children and thrust into a world she doesn’t recognize. “The Bound Man” explores the ideological conflict of matriarchal versus patriarchal societies alongside the notion of destiny. Li Reiko is stuck living out a legend/prophecy she had no hand in creating, and the story explores the effects of that on her children and on Halldór’s society. There are moments of this story that are so heartbreaking, and Kowal doesn’t give her characters an uncomplicated way out (no rewriting history, for example). The heart of the story is Li Reiko’s relationship with her kids (the hide-and-seek scene is genuinely heartwarming) and Halldór’s unerring belief in the legend of the Chooser of the Slain and her ability to rescue his country from the Troll King.

I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.

Sunday Shorts: Two from Cthulhu's Daughters

In 2015, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles co-edited Cthulhu’s Daughters: Stories of Lovecraftian Horror, in an effort to put paid to the rumor that “women don’t write Lovecraftian Horror / Weird Fiction.” No matter how many anthologies like this come out, there will be some people who still make that claim (heck, there are some who would claim women don’t write horror at all, or that women writing horror is a relatively recent development. Clueless, those people are.)

Here are my thoughts on a few of the 25 stories Moreno-Garcia and Stiles brought together.

Lockbox by E. Catherine Tobler

My opinion is that it takes a certain type of talent to write good serious “footnoted fiction.” (The type of story where as much is revealed in footnotes from the narrator as in the main text itself, that is. I thought about being cutesy and making this parenthetical aside a footnote, but I’m not sure I can get the formatting to work on my blog, and would it really be worth it?) I’ve read a fair number of such stories over the years, and in most of them I find the footnotes an affectation, often a distraction, rather than an enhancement. Not so here. Tobler’s story of two modern college students’ discovery of a long-buried but legendary Priory drips with atmosphere and foreboding from the very first sentence (“If nothing else, remember this: Edgar always knew.1”) and the footnotes enhance those feelings (“ 1 We may debate exactly when Edgar knew at length, but I am not convinced there was ever a single, discernable point one can reference; as the notions herein are circular,20 I feel so to was Edgar’s knowledge.” Yes, there’s a footnote to the footnote, which plays out very effectively later in the story). The narrator reveals the bloody history of the Priory and the history of his relationship with Edgar in just enough detail for the reader to understand how much isn’t be said … either because the narrator isn’t ready or is physically unable to share such details. It’s a fantastic counterpoint to Lovecraft, whose narrators often fell into what we call “purple prose” and shared too much detail; Tobler is as effective, or more so, in ramping up the creeping horror and dread with much less flowery language. And in the female protagonist, Tobler has created a character I find as horrifying as any of Lovecraft’s cosmic horrors.

Queen of a New America by Wendy N. Wagner

What is it about Nitocris, possible last queen of Egypt’s Sixth Dynasty, which draws so many writers of Lovecraftian horror to use her? Maybe it’s simply that Lovecraft himself mentions her in passing in two of his stories, making her a usable hook to expand on Lovecraft’s universe. Maybe it’s that so little is known about the historical Nitocris (including some debate over whether she actually existed at all), which makes her rife for use in all manner of genres from historical fiction to horror. Whatever it is, my experience is that usually in Lovecraftian horror, Nitocris is the Big Bad of the story/novel. Wendy N. Wagner turns that tradition upside down by showing a Nitocris who is far from the height of her power, her influence shrunk to being able to occasionally take control of a young girl’s body. Wagner explores the psychological effect of a drop from such lofty heights as well as revealing how it happened and draws comparisons between an Egypt where magic was commonplace and an America where logic and science have pushed magic to the background. Just when I thought I knew where the story was going, Wagner reveals a detail I hadn’t even noticed was missing and spins the story into a commentary about society we currently live in and where and how structures of power might be found in a world so different from the one Nitrocris knew. I enjoyed the claustrophobic feel of the story and the twist.

I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.

Sunday Shorts: Transgender Day of Visibility

March 31st is this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility. Rather than just review a story or two, I thought I’d list just a few of the many wonderful transgender, non-binary, and genderfluid short story and novella writers whose work I have enjoyed over the years (in no particular order) and give some links to where you can find their work or more about them. (Also, apologies in advance to anyone I leave off. It’s not purposeful, and this is not meant to be a complete list. I’m working under a little bit of a deadline.

Everett Maroon. I loved Everett’s memoir (Bumbling into Body Hair) and his novel (The Unintentional Time Traveler, which I’m hoping we’ll get a sequel to). His short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies as well as one collection (Spinning Around a Sun).  https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5759590.Everett_Maroon

Charlie Jane Anders. Charlie Jane has written YA novels (the Unstoppable trilogy), writing advice books (Never Say You Can’t Survive), novels (All the Birds in the Sky among them), and a good number of short stories (many collected in Even Greater Mistakes).  https://www.charliejaneanders.com/

Lee Mandelo. Lee wrote one of my favorite novels of 2021 (Summer Sons), one of my favorite novellas of 2023 (Feed Them Silence) and has another novella out this month (The Woods All Black, sitting atop my TBR pile right now), and his short stories can be found in places like Uncanny Magazine.  https://leemandelo.com/

K.M. Szpara. Novelist (First Become Ashes and Docile) and short story writer (appearances in Uncanny, Lightspeed, and elsewhere), K.M. also edited Transcendent: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction 2016, published  by Lethe Press. https://www.kmszpara.com/

Jordan L. Hawk. Jordan mixes gay romance and sex with Lovecraftian horror (the Whyborne & Griffin series), supernatural detective stories (the Spirits series), shapeshifters (the Hexworld and Pride books) and more.  https://jordanlhawk.com/

Nino Cipri. Nino Cipri’s short stories have appeared in Fireside Fiction, Nightmare, and elsewhere and collected in Homesick: Stories. They have also written novellas (Finna and Defekt) and the upcoming YA novel Dead Girls Don’t Dream. https://ninocipri.com/

Bogi Takacs.  Bogi’s short stories have been collected in The Trans Space Octopus Congregation (2019) and Power to Yield (2024). E also edited the 2017 – 2019 editions of Transcendent: The Year’s Transgender Speculative Fiction. Check out eir Patreon as well. https://www.patreon.com/bogiperson/posts

S.A. Hunt. Samara Hunt is the author of the Malus Domestica horror series along with some short stories. She also has a Patreon. http://www.sahuntbooks.com/about.html https://www.patreon.com/sahuntbooks/posts?filters%5Btag%5D=space

A.M. Dellamonica. Author of the Indigo Springs and Hidden Sea Tales series, Dellamonica’s short stories have appeared in Lightspeed Magazine and Uncanny Magazine among other places.  https://alyxdellamonica.com/

Nisi Shawl. Novelist (Everfair and the recently-released Kinning) and non-fiction writer (including co-authoring Writing the Other with Cynthia Ward), Shawl’s short stories have appeared in Apex Magazine and  Nightmare Magazine among many others, as well as in too many anthologies to list.  http://www.nisishawl.com/Index.html

Neon Yang. The author of one of my favorite on-going novella series, the Tensorate series, as well as a novel (The Genesis of Misery), Yang’s short fiction has appeared in magazine like Clarkesworld, anthologies like The Book of Dragons, and on Tor.com (now called Reactor). https://neonyang.com/

Sunday Shorts: Two by Sharang Biswas

Sharang Biswas is a game designer, writer, and artist based in New York City whose stories and poetry have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Baffling Magazine, Sana Stories, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Look him up on his website. Today, I’m going to look at his two most recent stories that appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams. Lightspeed Magazine contents are free to read on the website and e-book subscriptions are also available.

“Real Magic” (Lightspeed Magazine #153, February 2023)

Three townspeople visit the Witch in the Woods to ask for help with their problems. She extracts a different price from each, something either cherished or endemic to the person’s sense of self. Each visitor ultimately finds what they are searching for (or searching for relief from), but not in the way they or the reader expects. The witch uses their ingredients to do real magic. This is a beautifully told story, a fairy tale in style but cloaked in Biswas’ beautiful sense of character and community. Biswas uses the needs of the visitors (and their resolutions) to show that every individual action has an effect outside the moment in which that action is taken or that choice is made. Nothing happens in a vacuum, no one person’s fate is theirs alone. What one person discards (willingly or not) may be picked up by another (who may or may not benefit from it). I also loved how Biswas doesn’t spoon-fed the connections between the villagers’ stories but lets them come out organically and not all at once.

“Season of Weddings” (Lightspeed Magazine #166, March 2024, story goes live on the website March 28th)

Nate receives seven wedding invitations in one year. Okay, two of them are for his job, which is maybe a little less fun than attending as a guest. Especially because it quickly becomes apparent to the reader that Nate is Thanatos, god of death. Sometimes, people die at weddings. Still reeling from his most recent relationship break-up (with Thor, who has moved on to loving a mortal woman), Nate must navigate these weddings, new singlehood, his job, his perhaps too-pushy best friend, and a cute guy he keeps bumping into at the weddings. This story is so sweet, so romantic and wistful. I recognized some of myself in Nate’s self-esteem issues around romance and relationships, which made me connect to the work even more. The world-building is also wonderful, bringing together characters from all sorts of world mythologies and religions but tweaking them in new and interesting ways (for instance, the Thor is this story is neither the “drunken jock” we often see nor the blond-tressed super-hero). I won’t spoil who all shows up, because part of the fun of the story is the reveals of Nate’s friends’ circle. I’m a sucker for “deities and personifications of human concepts walk among us and act like every-day people” types of stories (think the classic issue number eight of Neil Gaiman’s the Sandman, illustrated by Mike Dringenberg, among others), and this one fits the description very well. It also fits very well as a paranormal romance, and I love it when authors blend and blur genres.

I love short fiction, and Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it. I’ve considered promising to review a short story every day, but that’s a lot of pressure. And while no one will fault me if I miss days, I’ll feel guilty, which will lead to not posting at all. So better to stick to a weekly post highlighting a couple/three stories, as I’ve done in the past. Click on the Sunday Shorts tab at the bottom of this post to find earlier entries in the series!