Tag: fiction elsewhere

Short story in Kaleidotrope

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

It’s July and I’m back in my favourite zine with a story (science fiction, very rare for me) about a dam and the problem of power transmission. It’s called Transmission Systems.

Top-secret corporate communications, report the secret police to their superiors. Highly suspicious, most likely an attempt by the opposition to influence the election, and the military security man, filing his report on the secret policemen rather later, remarks that: José is cheating on his mistress with Aníbal’s wife who is certainly blackmailing him for our eastern quadrant comrades. Recommend to keep under observation. But none of them stay long enough to see the message divide…

There are so many other great pieces in this issue. Look at the table of contents!

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.

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).

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.

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.

Kaleidotrope + Big Echo

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

I have a new story and a reprint out this month.

  1. Doll’s House follows directly on from God Thing, which also appeared in Kaleidotrope back in 2017. They are both bouncy adventure stories about Rob and Lettie, a couple of kids doing inadvisable things in a ruined city, under the disapproving supervision of Rob’s goddess, Ann. You shouldn’t need to read both of them, but of course you may want to. 

    This issue also includes great stories and poetry by Anya Ow, Cat Sparks, William R. Eakin, Santiago Belluco, Helen Stubbs, Megan Arkenberg, Jennifer Crow, Karolina Fedyk, R.K. Duncan, Cassandra Rose Clarke and Hester J. Rook. 

  2. Under Dead Marsh originally appeared in Lackington’s Magazine in 2016 and I am really happy it has been reprinted in Big Echo’s Avant Garde issue, which looks fantastic. 

    The other stories are by Brendan C. Byrne, Stephen Langlois, Ahimaz Rajessh, Yurei Raita, Dan Grace, John Shirley, Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, Peter Milne Greiner, Laurence A. Rickels and Rudy Rucker. Mine remains a mix of Dylan Thomas and town council planning application squabbles, on Mars.

 

Short Story in On Spec

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

I am very late to this, but I see Issue #110 Vol. 29 No.3-4 of On Spec came out in April with a piece by me – well, really a collection of very short pieces called ‘The Care and Conservation of Unusual Properties’.

Contains library deep-cleaning, inventory marking, dusting, volunteer incentive issues and very large spiders! This collection was once accused of being postmodern, which surprised me, because I thought of it as a reasonably accurate transcription of several monologues someone rather like me was once on the nodding side of.

Well, fairly accurate. I guess no one said anything about a dragon.

Lackington’s #18 free to read

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

The “Magics” issue of Lackington’s is now free to read, including my little Roman ghost story, Prima Fuit, Finis Erit.

First Cynthia caught me with her fulminating eyes. O me miserum! Captive and collared, a fool never before touched. Now she, trailing charred Coan silk, her curls breathing cold perfume, leans over my bed: We shall lie together, you and I…

… but of course you should check out the whole amazing issue. I have said this before, but Propertius is my favourite of the Augustan lyric poets, partly just because of all the Augustan lyric girlfriends only Cynthia gets to speak for herself. And what she says is almost never flattering to Propertius.

Detail of Pear Nuallak’s gorgeous illustration!

Short Story in Lackington’s

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

Lackington's #18 Cover

The ‘Magics’ issue of Lackington’s is out, with a little Roman ghost story from me that I’m not going to say much about, because I said it all in an interview a couple of weeks ago, although I had not then seen Pear Nuallak’s gorgeous illustration. The full table of contents is:

When the Vine Came, by S.R. Mandel
Prima Fuit, Finis Erit, by Julia August
The Wytch-Byrd of the Nabryd-Keind, by Farah Rose Smith
Collar for Captain Cormorant, by Rekha Valliappan
Song of the Oliphant, by KT Bryski
Love Letters from Velveteen, by M. Raoulee

Artists: Carol Wellart, Grace P. Fong, Sharon J. Gochenour, Derek Newman-Stille, Pear Nuallak, Kat Weaver, and P. Emerson Williams.

… and you can get the issue as ePub, mobi and PDF if you don’t want to wait six months to read it (which of course you shouldn’t).

Short Story in Kaleidotrope

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction, Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

Welcome to 2018! The cover for the new issue of Kaleidotrope was drawn by Kat Weaver and it is so beautiful you absolutely need to go take a look just for that.

Also I have a story in it: ‘The Little Duchess’, in which Baldesar di Casatico relives nine years of his life all at once and regrets dealing with a devil of sorts:

She was wearing crimson, as she had been when Baldesar first met her. He found his feet beginning to drag. In nine years, she hadn’t aged a day.

She wasn’t smiling; but then, she seldom did. He grasped a headstone. He might have known, he thought. Ambitious courtiers, like their princes, seldom got to enjoy a peaceful retirement. He might have realized there would be no escape.

The headstone was shaking, or he was.

“Anna,” he said.

The full TOC is stellar:

“Shadows and Bells”  by Mari Ness
“A Slip in the Slice” by Heather Morris
“The Fashion of Men” by Kat Otis
“The Temporary Suicides of Goldfish” by Octavia Cade
“Totemic” by Jennifer Crow
“Batman at the Wheel” by Mary Alexandra Agner
“Report on Incident 3179” by irving
Horoscopes
A Word from the Editor