Tag: short stories

In our town, there are two roads that cross on top of a hill. Go through the intersection and you’ll tip down toward the mall (east) or the turnpike ramp (west) or the high school (north) or the endless town-house developments (south). But everyone at school says there’s another tipping point there, a fifth cardinal direction.

Specifically, there is a staircase cut into a grassy hill: fifteen wooden planks, the final one inches above the asphalt. If you walk down them, if you take that last step, your foot will never hit the street.

You will disappear.

My new story “The Staircase”–about urban legends, gossip, and what we’ll do to keep our friends–is available now in the July/August 2020 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

You can now order individual paper copies (click the PayPal link) and e-books (all formats).

You can also subscribe! Order paper copy subscriptions from F&SF, a digital subscriptions (all formats) Weightless Books, or Kindle editions.

This past year saw the release of two stories eligible for awards consideration:

“The Children’s Cabinet”
Shirley Magazine, Issue 13 (spring 2019)
730 words / short story

“The Albatwitch Chorus”
Asimov’s Science Fiction, September/October 2019
8,000 words / novelette

Read in the SFWA forums. (Log in required.)

I was also pleased to discuss the story with the Asimov’s blog, From the Earth to the Stars.

Thank you for reading!

You can find my newest short story, “The Albatwitch Chorus,” in the Sept./Oct. issue of Asimov’s. It’s about a witch going through a midlife crisis, her ex-husband, her teenage intern, and the cryptids in her backyard:

“Possum?” I asked, but the wind shifted, revealing the body was too big. Curled hands and pointed black ears of a raccoon, but sparse fur and no tail. I had never seen one before, but I knew.

“Albatwitch,” Jonas said, his eyes still fixed on the creature. “Go call animal control.”

Very little scared me, yet I nodded mutely, hurried through the kitchen door, and stood at the window with a phone in hand. Albatwitches carried disease. They attracted predators. And they had mysterious funerary rites one did not want to interrupt. They mostly kept to themselves, but they were quick to retaliate, and usually as a chorus—that was the name for a group—at least, before the 1979 Treaty of Half Moon Rock, sealed with an exchange of apples (from us) and a mound of empty soda cans, a few nuggets of raw garnet, and a deer carcass (from them).

You can order print and digital subscriptions, purchase an eBook copy, or find the issue on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and a million other stores.

The baby — well, she’s no longer a baby. She stands at the cabinet door, only wobbles a little as it swings back. The baby — the youngest and the last, forever the baby — has inherited the amusements of three older siblings. To you, the cabinet is an archive of ten years of raising children, but to the baby, it contains the future.

Read my new flash story “The Children’s Cabinet” in Shirley Magazine.

The September/October issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction is here, and it brings my story “The Witch of Osborne Park.”

It was expensive to live in Osborne Park, but it was worth it, the realtor promised. You were paying for the charm, engraved corner stones and peaked attics. You were paying for block parties and solstice celebrations. You were paying for the Neighborhood Association; for tranquility and protection.

(Spoiler alert: neither tranquility nor protection are found.)

It is a special joy to share this story with the world during the fall, when the children of Osborne Park gather in their purple robes and don their wooden masks. Happy Halloween, and hold your children close, unless maybe you shouldn’t.

You can order print and digital subscriptions, purchase an eBook copy, or find the issue on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and a million other stores.