Tag: fantasy

Short story in Kaleidotrope

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

Not an April Fool’s! It’s ‘Charybdis’, a fun bouncy story about working in customer service, when all your customers are the supernatural type:

I was sitting at my desk with my feet up, filing my nails, when Martin Josephs walked in. Big man, black, probably a shifter with those eyes, probably a bear with those shoulders, he was looking around the dingy Victorian hall as if he might be trying to find the town council, then saw my desk under the pale fluorescent light and headed for me instead. I’d pegged him for a client straight away and you only get one chance to make a first impression. Unfortunately, I plumped for Cherry.

He hesitated, and I swung Cherry’s legs down from the desk with aggravating slowness and gave him a bored pink lipstick smile. “Hi,” I said. “This is the Old World Advice Bureau. Can I help you?”

I love Kaleidotrope and feel very much at home there: everything in the zine is fun and worth reading.

A wild flash reprint appears!

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

It’s ‘Modern Cassandra’, originally published in F&SF a couple of years ago, now free to read in Small Wonders:

Modern Cassandra tries so hard to warn us, but all her visions go to Junk. I have an important revelation! she writes. I saw you in my dreams. This is urgent. Please reply, but even though she flags her emails as top priority we never do.

With thanks to Medium Amanda, who made a really dedicated effort to connect with me towards the end of 2019! And yet I never replied to her. What would have happened if I had?

Short story in Cosmic Horror Monthly (September)

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

I am so late to this, but I had a story in the September issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly: ‘Tyger, Tyger’, about a big cat in a concrete jungle, and being so bored you burn your own life down, and of course there’s some William Blake hiding in there too.

Wednesday morning, eleven a.m. There’s an abstract depiction of hell splashed across the lobby. Nick looks once, sees immortal souls arrayed in burning torment, looks twice and realises it’s a tapestry, red blurring into yellow blurring into infernal murk. The symmetry is upsetting, like one screaming face flung endlessly between two fragmenting mirrors. “Can I take your coat?” the girl says. “I’ll show you down.”

This is the third of what I think of as my Weird London stories, following Psychopomps of Central London in The Dark and Puppet Show in Places We Fear To Tread. You can get the issue in print ($11.99) or digital ($3.99).

Poem in Fantasy

On By Julia AugustIn poetry

A tiny new departure for me. I have written three poems since I was eighteen; the third of them is in this month’s issue of Fantasy Magazine, available to subscribers here. It will go online later this month, but of course you should subscribe and get the whole fantastic issue right now.

My piece is called The End of Little Dreams and it is a poem for anyone getting through the day by thinking very, very hard about the place they are definitely going to have sometime:

It’s 6.18am and you are looking at / reproduction William de Morgan tiles / and Morris & Co fabrics on John Lewis…

Short story in Kaleidotrope

On By Julia AugustIn Uncategorized

The summer issue of Kaleidotrope is out and I have a new short story in it: ‘With Flowers in Her Hair’, about Emma, who finds a creepy girl in the woods and brings her home and mostly doesn’t regret this, although some other people do. And it’s about the things you find under the mountains, and knowing when to turn a blind eye, and how Ann, a very creepy girl, accidentally turned her bones to stone.

For this I read half of Agricola’s De Re Metallica and borrowed a bit from the story of Rübezahl. One day I’ll read the whole thing.

Flash in F&SF

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Flash fiction

I have another tiny “where-are-they-now” story in the May/June issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction called ‘Modern Cassandra’. I wrote this in January 2020. It’s about that jerk Apollo and I want to dedicate it to Medium Amanda, who tried so hard to get in touch with me towards the end of 2019. And yet I never opened any of her emails! Who knows what would have happened if I had?

Extract: "She worked as an artist's assistant before she matched with Apollo on Tinder. In the middle of painting exquisite hyperrealist copies of torn-out newspaper pictures to inspire her employer, Apollo took her to lunch in a Covent Garden restaurant filled with pheasant feathers and stags' heads"

The restaurant is Rules! I’m pretty sure it’s run by Apollo the Hunter. Who else?

Podcast – ‘City of Wolves and Lightning’ in Tales to Terrify

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

Graeme Dunlop has done a fantastic reading of my story “City of Wolves and Lightning” for the Tales to Terrify podcast.

This bit of Roman civil war weird was originally published in Lamplight back in 2016, so it’s not currently available anywhere else online. Sometimes I thought about calling it “Sorry Caesar, But Your City is in Another Country!” Maybe I should have done.

Fantasy Magazine Flash Free to Read

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Flash fiction, News

My little labyrinth story, ‘After Naxos, Ariadne’, is now free to read in Fantasy Magazine. It’s a very short short, so all I’ll say is that I know a lot of you are very keen on the second person, but my preferred weird point of view is the first plural.

Also, as always, you can buy the entire issue RIGHT NOW for just $2.99, or subscribe to a whole year for $23.88!

Flash in Fantasy Magazine

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Flash fiction, News
Fantasy Magazine cover (Feb 2022)

I have a tiny story in this month’s Fantasy Magazine! It’s about labyrinths. Did you know the Cyprus government gateway portal is called Ariadni? You do now.

After Naxos, Ariadne moved to Nicosia and built a new labyrinth online. Here she sits and smiles and buries her bullish secrets: where to buy building permits and apply for trademarks and government grants and benefits. How to join the fire service. Authenticating seafarers. “That way leads to an external labyrinth,” she says pleasantly. “Oh dear, has the roof fallen in? I’ll send someone down to dig it out later.”

I’ll come back to this in a couple of weeks when it goes live online, but meanwhile you can buy the whole amazing issue or subscribe to read all those fantastic stories and poems now.