Author: Julia August

Reader, writer, curious person. Generally friendly. Stories in Fantasy Magazine, 'Places We Fear To Tread', Apparition Lit, The Dark, 'Monstrosities', the Journal of Unlikely Academia, Women Destroy Fantasy!, PodCastle, Lackington's Magazine, Kaleidotrope and elsewhere.

Short story in Unsung Stories

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Flash fiction, Short Story

I have a piece of drowned-town flash up at Unsung Stories: The Girl who Talked to the Sea.

The first storm hit Eccles-on-Sea on Jenny’s fourteenth birthday. She lay curled up counting her cold toes while the wind battered the roof tiles and knocked the bells about in the grey church steeple. Rain splattered against the shutters like a cat trying to claw its way inside. Shivering, Jenny pulled her blankets over her head and squeezed her eyes shut against the dark.

I find drowned towns creepy and fascinating, and although the drowned towns along the Norfolk coastline aren’t as dramatic as Helike, there’s a lot to be said for walking along grey beaches listening out for the church bells tolling under the sea.

Short Unlikely Story

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, News, Short Story

The newly minted SFWA-qualifying Journal of Unlikely Academia is out, featuring stories by Nicolette Barischoff, Sean Robinson, E. Saxey, Eric Schwitzgebel, Abra Staffin-Wiebe, Pear Nuallak and Rose Lemberg, illustrations by Patricio Beteo, Thomas Christopher Haag, Liam Quin, Diane Dellicarpini, Kevin Martin and John Bibire, plus a piece by me with a wonderful illustration by Jakub Niedziela.

Soteriology and Stephen Greenwood expresses my sincere conviction that most long-lost-apocalypse-prophecy-fetch-questers have completely the wrong priorities. They may not be the only ones, of course. It includes textual criticism, academic passive-aggression on a grand scale and Latin puns! Could I sink any lower? (Yes. Almost certainly, yes.) I’m not going to say much more, because if you follow the links within the story (and you should!) you’ll get a pretty clear idea of at least one of the things that inspired it, but I’m ridiculously pleased: I love this story, but was never sure anyone else would get the jokes, and so am very grateful to editors Bernie Mojzes and A.C. Wise for offering it a home. ❤

Around the Internet (September 2015)

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction elsewhere, News, Reading Short Fiction, Short Story

In case you missed it, I had a couple of short stories out this month: (1) Voice and Silence appeared in The Sockdolager this month. It’s a dark little piece featuring kittens being horrible to even smaller animals, among other things. If you cohabit with cats, you may appreciate it. (2) Rites of Passage appeared in Kaleidotrope. It’s a dusty desert adventure featuring empire-building, false amber, Ann and a dragon, among other things. (Helpful note: when I say “dragon”, I’m thinking of something that looks rather like this.)

FICTION

The Unicorn by Amanda C. Davis (poem, unicorn, magic)

Your Future and Mine by John Grey (poem, space, not so glamorous as you thought)

Ghostalker by T.L. Huchu (practical necromancy, vivid landscapes, cultural references)

The Closest Thing to Animals by Sofia Samatar (artists, jealousy, friendship)

Prospero by Bruno Dias and Edgar Allen Poe (interactive, red death, masque)

The Peal Divers by Francesca Forrest (poetry, sunken churches, sound)

Grandmother by Leslianne Wilder (poetry, grandmother, ageing wolfishly)

Note to the Caretaker by Lisa Bellamy (poetry, mole, earth artistry)

Scythia by Marinelle G. Ringer (poetry, myths, Greece and Rome)

Hide Behind by Jason Kimble (monster, mystery, jackalopes)

Storm on Solar Seas by T.L. Huchu (space shipwreck, cannibalism, unhappy ending)

Lock and Key by Mike Reeves (assassination attempts, vizier, lady alchemist)

Dustbaby by Alix E. Harrow (end times, dust bowl, old worlds)

The Oiran’s Song by Isabella Yap (war, abuse, prostitution, demon)

OTHER THINGS

Plasma Frequency are holding a kickstarter to fund their return.

The Strange Horizons 2015 fund drive has launched.

Lightspeed is open to fantasy subs until 31 October.

The Book Smugglers have a call for novellas.

Lackington’s Magazine editor Ranylt Richildis went to Nantes and saw a clockwork elephant!

Short story in The Sockdolager

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

The fall issue of The Sockdolager is out today and includes a short study of feline psychopathy by me: Voice and Silence, featuring kittens, mice, old farmhouses, some other weird stuff that happened to be lying around in my head. Context: today I shook a mouse out of a boot and removed another (dead) one to the hedge. Yes, this is about my cats. Of course, they were younger then…

Things seen and read around the internet

Around the Internet: August 2015

On By Julia AugustIn Reading Short Fiction

Urk, September already. Of course the first day of September is sunnier than any day in August. Maybe that’s why I went on a dark reading kick in the middle of last month.

FICTION

Three Adventures of Simon Says by Daniel Ausema (playground rhymes, familiar horrors, cute adventures)

How to Recover a Relative Lost in Transmatter Shipping, in Five Easy Steps by Carrie Cuinn (family, work, killer last lines)

And this is the song it sings by Megan Arkenburg (road trip, highway monsters, ghost stories)

An Army of Angels by Caspian Gray (inadvisable loyalty, Frankenstein’s angel, horrible things in the closet)

Ishq by Usman T Malik (grandmother, sister, floods, ghosts)

Bog Dog by Seras Nikita (rural horrors)

Shiva, Open Your Eye by Laird Barron (squamous elder things)

The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins by Molly Tanzer (sorcerer, treachery, cutest awful incest, humour)

The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter by Angela Slatter (ghosts, murder, poison)

Magdala Amygdala by Lucy A Snyder (upstanding virus-zombies, relapses, whoops)

I Make People Do Bad Things by Chesya Burke (gang violence, creepy kids)

Where It Lives by Nathaniel Lee (grief, loss, children coping badly)

Terrible Fish by Dora Badger (murderer, mirrors, actually cancer)

Palimpsest by Frances Rowat (enslaved desert creature, days of misrule, the king in yellow)

This is not a metaphor by Christie Yant (curse, troll, metaphor owning its status as metaphor)

Replete by Maggie Butt (poem, sea view, winter)

The Cure by Malinda Lo (escape through vampirism)

The Conversion by Barry King (alien, assimilation, extremely weird)

The Matter with Mr Levene by Louis Rakovitch (ghosts, landlords, letters)

Snake Game by Vajra Chandrasekera with Tory Hoke (ghosts, soldiers, interactive)

OTHER THINGS

Open again for subs: Uncanny, Fireside Fiction, Space and Time, Mythic Delirium.

New SFF magazines: Farstrider, fantasy, 1000-4000 words, $0.03 per word, actually closed already for subs but launching in January. Sub-Q, an interactive fiction magazine paying pro-rates that gives me an opportunity to find out just what interactive fiction is! Sub-Saharan Magazine, African flavour SFF, 1000-2000 words, token payment.

Uncanny Magazine Year 2 Kickstarter has funded but there are still stretch goals (deadline 10 September).

Call for subs for the Escape Artist event Artemis Rising II: original SF/F/H fiction at $0.06 per word from women and non-binary authors, submissions open during September.

Call for subs for the anthology Cthulusattva: Lovecraftian Tales of the Black Gnosis (up to 7000 words, $0.03 per word, stories from the cultist’s perspective, deadline 15 December).

Things seen and read around the internet

Around the Internet: July 2015

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction elsewhere, News, Reading Short Fiction, Short Story

Not much here, because I got back mid-July and slept for a week, or maybe a little more. Let’s just say that if something happened between April and now, I probably missed it. One thing that did happen in the last couple of weeks was that I had a very small piece of Virgiliana up at Two Words For: Durus Amor, about that time Dido met Aeneas in the underworld.

FICTION

The Skinner of the Sky by M. Bennardo (profligate prince, lighthouse, weird fiction)

OTHER THINGS

A new token SFF market, Capricious, is open for fiction and nonfiction subs (3000-5000 words, $50 per piece).

Fireside Fiction is opening for subs 1-30 September (1-4000 words, $0.12 per word).

Canadian dark SFF anthology series Post-Scripts to Darkness moved to an invitation-only, online magazine model.

A new $0.6-per-word fun SFF online ‘zine opened up: Mothership Zeta, part of the Escape Artists stable, edited by Mur Lafferty, Sunil Patel and Karen Bovenmyer. Quarterly, with limited submission windows (already opened and closed for #1, in fact), emphasis on “fun”.

Free fiction thisaway!

Flash Fiction at Two Words For

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Flash fiction, Short Story

I’m back! And I have a very short piece of Virgiliana up at Two Words For: Durus Amor, about that time Dido met Aeneas in the underworld. Which is a nice thing to happen on a day dreary even for an English July. Feel free to share the page on Facebook, if you’re there.

Things seen and read around the internet

Around the Internet (April 2015)

On By Julia AugustIn Uncategorized

This is likely to be the last of these posts for a few months, which is why I’m posting now, rather than at the end of April. I’m currently travelling and am unlikely to have much time (or internet, more to the point) for online reading until the end of the summer.

FICTION

Spring Thaw by Charles Payseur (horrible things coming up from the ice)

The Spine of Worlds by Eric Rosenfield (tower, adventures, crossing worlds)

Monkey King by Zen Cho (Monkey visits Elfland)

Five Things Every Successful Clown Must Do by Derek Manuel (flash fiction, clowns, humour, horror)

OTHER NOTES

More editorial changes at Podcastle, where Rachael K. Jones and Graeme Dunlop have taken over. Congratulations both!

Lackington’s #6 is now available for free online, if you were waiting for that to see the pretty pictures/read the sea stories from last month. Plus note that subs reopen in May for the themes of dreams and architecture.

Things seen and read around the internet

Around the Internet (March 2015)

On By Julia AugustIn News, Reading Short Fiction, Uncategorized

FICTION

The Selkie by David K. Yeh (selkie, adventure, Nazis, witches)

The Whale of Penlan Tork by Stevan Earnshaw (experimental, Greek chorus, sea journey, whale; full disclosure: I really have no idea what was going on here, but I rather loved it anyway)

The Rud Yard by Vajra Chandrasekera (the President then expressed a preference, if it came right down to it, for literal assassination over character assassination, because he just found the latter so offensive)

A Screech of Gulls by Alyc Helms (otherworld Venice, extortion and gull-murder, bleak or what)

A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away by John Berryman (poetry, seasons, subtle rhythm)

Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton (exhilarating martial poetry from the dawn of WW1, Don John goes to war, well I never promised it would all be new)

Any House in the Storm by Tais Teng (rivalry, architecture, spiky characters, rapprochement)

OTHER NOTES

Strange Horizons is shut to fiction subs for April.

New speculative podcast, The People’s Ink, is open for subs (focus on the Pacific Northwest for preference, $0.02 per word, original and reprints).

Submission periods for Lightspeed Queers Destroy! projects have been announced, along with a brief general submissions window (June/July).

More royal Macedonian tombs at Vergina! (Greece, like Italy, has more archaeology than it can afford, unfortunately.)

A piece in TLS on archaeological destruction in Iraq etc. by Eleanor Robson (“The fact is that ancient stones can wait, as they have waited for millennia; they depend on the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi people need us more”).