Fab Fic Friday: Littlewood, Tidhar, Bear, El-Mohtar

Goood morning my lovelies.  Here are some of the short fic I've been loving this week -

Wolves and Witches and Bears by Alison Littlewood - Nightmare #34/July 2015
In which Nick and Ella go on holiday to Croatia to try and reconnect, but when Nick's choice of a walking route ends in trouble, Ella must dig deep into herself to come to the rescue. But digging deep brings its own dangers and Ella will be forever transformed by the results.  This is an enthralling tale with as much satisfaction to be found in Nick's suggested fate as there is in Ella's.

Flash by Lavie Tidhar - Daily Science Fiction/June 2015
It's a fun and pointed flash piece, being something of a behind the scenes account of what really happened that time a certain planetary overlord was deposed.

Swell by Elizabeth Bear - Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep, ed. Paula Guran (Prime Books)
Mermaids! Elizabeth Bear! Did you need more? Oh, well, ok then...this one tells of a musician's encounter with a mysterious blind girl and the aftermath of a night spent together.  It's a beautiful tale that weaves finding your own voice with not taking the easy option and is a bit reminiscent of some of de Lint's Newford stories. 

Madeleine by Amal El-Mohtar - Lightspeed #61/June 2015
This is a wonderfully moving story and no description would truly do it justice.  It tells of grief and loneliness and altered mental realities; and there's also something mildly disturbing about the speed with which Madeleine's therapist can get her institutionalised when she speaks about the interactive memory flashes she's experiencing after participation in an Alzheimers drug trial.

The Cool Reads (and other shiny stuff) of 2013 Post

And lo, there were many funky stories read in 2013....

Though I didn't read nearly as much online fiction as in previous years, recommended shorts from the year-that-was include:
Abyssus Abyssum Invocat by Genevieve Valentine - Lightspeed (February 2013)
As Large as Alone by Alena McNamara - Crossed Genres (July 2013)
The Crimson Kestrel by Leslianne Wilder - Beneath Ceaseless Skies (February 2013)
Death Comes Sideways to the Mall by William Alexander - Apex Magazine #46
Dreams of Peace by Dana Beehr - Beneath Ceaseless Skies (May 2013)
The Drowned Man by Laura E. Price - Beneath Ceasless Skies (May 2013)
A Family for Drakes by Margaret Ronald - Beneath Ceaseless Skies (March 2013)
Forgiving Dead by Jeff Stehman - Daily Science Fiction (May 2013)
From the Book of Names My Mother Did Not Give Me by Christine V. Lao - Expanded Horizons (April 2013)
In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind (part 1) (part 2) by Sarah Pinsker - Strange Horizons (July 2013)  
In Metal, In Bone by An Owomoyela - Eclipse Online (March 2013)
A Little Sleep by Melissa Mead - Daily Science Fiction (May 2013)
Mermaid's Hook by Liz Argall - Apex Magazine #46
Of Ash and Old Dreams by Sarah Grey - Daily Science Fiction (June 2013)
The Princess and Her Tale by Mari Ness - Daily Science Fiction (May 2013)
Pythian Games by Tom Doyle - Daily Science Fiction (March 2013)
Singing Like a Hundred Dug-up Bones by Alex Dally MacFarlane - Beneath Ceaseless Skies (May 2013)
Swan Song by Melissa Mead - Daily Science Fiction (April 2013)
With Tales in Their Teeth, From the Mountain They Came by A.C. Wise- Lightspeed (January 2013)
Town's End by Yukimi Ogawa - Strange Horizons (March 2013)

Anthologies:
There were some cracking anthologies published in 2013, if you haven't already picked them up, go check out:
Glitter and Mayhem, John Klima & Michael Damian Thomas (eds) (Apex Book Company)       
Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, Bill Campbell, Edward Austin & Edward Hall (eds) (Rosarium Publishing)       
Noir Carnival, K. A Laity (ed.) (Fox Spirit Books)       
Tales of Eve, Mhairi Simpson (ed.) (Fox Spirit Books)       
Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction, Mariano Villarreal (Editor), Sue Burke (Translator), Lawrence Schimel (Translator) (Sportula) (First English translation edition in 2013)       
The Book of the Dead, Jared Shurin (ed.) (Jurassic London)       
The Other Half of the Sky, Athena Andreadis & Kay T Holt (Candlemark & Gleam)       
We See a Different Frontier: A postcolonial speculative fiction anthology, Djibril Al-Ayad and Fabio Fernandes (Futurefire.net Publishing)       
What Fates Impose, Nayad Monroe (ed.) (Alliteration Ink)       
Winter Well: Speculative Novellas About Older Women, Kay T. Holt (ed.) (Crossed Genres)       

Collections! (Because you can never have enough short stories!)
Across the Event Horizon, Mercurio D. Rivera (Newcon Press)
Conservation of Shadows, Yoon Ha Lee (Prime Books)       
How the World Became Quiet, Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Press)       
Kabu Kabu, Nnedi Okorafor (Prime Books)
This Strange Way of Dying, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Exile Editions)

Artists who did beautiful beautiful art! 
Alexandra Knickel (Assorted covers, including this Lightspeed one)       
Amy Mebberson (Pocket Princesses web comics)   
Edvige Faini (assorted covers, including this Lightspeed one)
Halil Ural (this Lightspeed cover)
Julie Dillon (assorted covers - I am an unashamed fangirl of her work!)       
Mats Minnhagen (assorted covers)       
Renee Nault (assorted illustrations and web comics)       
Sarah Anne Langton (assorted covers)       
Sara K. Diesel (cover of This Strange Way of Dying)       
Sutthiwat Dechakamphu (assorted covers, including this Lightspeed one)       
Tina Marie Lane (assorted covers)       
Zack Fowler (assorted covers)       
Zsófia Tuska (assorted covers, including this Beneath Ceaseless Skies one) 

Shiny Shorts

There is no such thing as too many blogs. Really there isn't. ;-) So with that in mind, a few of us have started up a review blog specifically for all things short fiction. We'll be covering flash, short stories, novellas; podcasts, print & online magazines; anthologies & collections; fantasy, horror, SF, & crime; new releases & old favourites.

And so, announcing: Shiny Shorts!

So far we've posted reviews of Welcome to Bordertown, Beneath Ceaseless Skies #86, The Princess Trap by Peter Darbyshire (from Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #11), Lavender and Lychgates by Angela Slatter (from Best New Horror #22 but originally from Sourdough and Other Stories) and The Thief of Precious Things by A. C. Wise (from Bewere the Night), and there's plenty more reviews stacked up in the post-schedule queue so drop on by and have a trawl through.

And if any of you, dear internet peeps, fancy volunteering to contribute the odd review, please do let me know - can be of single stories/audio fic, or full magazine/anthology etc. reviews, and we'll also take reprints of older reviews - the point is to share the love of all things short-fic!

Get your Shiny Shorts on! ;-P

Shiny Shorts: The Princess Trap

Found in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #11, The Princess Trap by Peter Darbyshire is a wonderfully fun story about a dragon, a not-really princess, the inevitable knights that cross their path and the mutually beneficial arrangement they work out between them.

Saleema is an orphan sheepherder who dreams of being a queen but when she loses her flock to a dragon intent on settling down nearby, necessity forces her to work with the dragon in order to survive. Being a smart young lady of quite sensible character she soon turns the dragon's hunger and the questing knights assorted demises to her advantage, sowing the seeds for what is going to be a quite useful partnership for both of them.

This is a lighthearted romp of a tale with a heroine who succeeds through her own cleverness and adaptability and promises the continuance of interesting things after the story has ended, which is always a good thing. Love it!

Shiny Shorts: Lavender and Lychgates

Found in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #22 (ed. Stephen Jones), Lavender and Lychgates by Angela Slatter is definitely a story that should be read at least twice to get full appreciation of something that is both moving and creepy.

It tells the story of a girl finding her place in the world, but it also tells the story of the living coming to terms with the dead (and possibly vice versa) and the old trouble that haunts the family.
There's a dead brother and a restless sister, and an ill timed trip giving blood to his grave. There's a fox-woman who's trying to stir up some revenge and a lost woman who's willing to help from the shadows and all told with an evocative fairy tale quality that easily enchants the reader.

The characters are excellent and the family relationships and interactions both completely real and quite appealing. Oh, and there's a street where 'books are born', which is quite possibly the loveliest bit of city-setting I've ever seen. What with the print shops and paper makers and ink makers and bookshops, is it any wonder that our heroine chooses to take up the book-binding trade?

Now if I can just find an e-book version of the Tartarus Press collection Sourdough & Other Stories that this was originally published in, I'd be a very happy bunny indeed.

Shiny Shorts: The Thief of Precious Things

The Thief of Precious Things by A.C. Wise

"The world has been still too long, crows above, foxes below, and men somewhere in between."

There is a glass tower in the city, a place where the humans congregate and work on secret things, but fox-girls have a habit of getting into secret things - especially when there's Crow Lords to get the better of.

There is a fox-girl who dared what her sisters wouldn't and had her name stolen from her. She breached the tower but those memories, too, have escaped her and now what she found and what she stole is wanted by humans and Crow Lords alike.

There are a man and a woman whose goodwill and need for peace get them tangled up in trickster games, and when you play with tricksters, change is inevitable.

I'll confess, I have a thing for trickster tales and this one is a rather glorious example. It's about freedom and becoming something else and shaking the world up when its gotten stuck in a rut. This latter can be seen particularly by the division between the two trickster races - the brotherhood of Crow Lords get authority (and capitalisation) while the sisterhood of fox-girls have submission as one of their recognisable natural attributes; a display of extremes that illustrates the need for something a little more balanced if things are to move forward.

Our fox-girl protag makes for a heroine who is both charming and daring, as she gets herself into trouble then finangles her way out of it and the changes wrought in her wake promise interesting times ahead. While the Crow Lords are identikit ciphers, the human support, Yuki and Ani, have character enough to make you care about their divergent needs and fates.

Thief is set in a post-apocalyptic world but it has the kind of enchanting storytelling that can be found in the best Charles de Lint. Definitely a world to which the author should return to as I'd love to read more stories set here. All in all, a fantastic tale.


Found in Bewere the Night, ed. Ekaterina Sedia
Published in April 2011 by Prime books, $14.95 (or thereabouts) from assorted retailers.
More about A.C. Wise here.