Tag: Short Story

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!

Flash in Cosmic Horror Monthly’s Patreon Series

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

Cosmic Horror Monthly is running a series of Patreon-only flash pieces: this month’s is mine! Dunwich Revisited, a tiny quiet reflective walk around a Lovecraft-flavoured valley.

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.

Flash in On Spec Issue #116 vol 31.2

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

The latest issue of On Spec is out, featuring my very short story ‘The Opportunity Costs of Adventure: Unsent Emails from Stephen Greenwood’s Drafts Folder’. Did you ever wonder what it does to your career when you keep running off to save the world? Dr Greenwood (last seen in The Journal of Unlikely Academia‘s ‘Soteriology and Stephen Greenwood’) would really like to tell you! However, he’s not going to, because nothing ruins a reputation faster than emailing a professional mailing list about apocalypse and ancient prophecy. Maybe he’ll just save that email to Drafts.

Detail of Onspec cover.
‘The Opportunity Costs of Adventure’. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to smuggle a vial of lion’s blood and a ceremonial knife through a Turkish airport nowadays…

Short story in PLACES WE FEAR TO TREAD

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

PLACES WE FEAR TO TREAD cover

26 authors, 26 locations, 347 pages, 100k+ words; original horror stories from many of the genre’s darkest minds. Nightmares imagined into real places; from Nigeria to Japan, North America to Australia. Locations the authors have inhabited and imbued with the sinister–hiking trails, haunted lakes, relics of faded industry, and even a Hawaiian volcano!

I have a piece of London weird in this anthology. Real places featured include:

It has now been six months since I’ve seen any of those places (thanks, 2020!) so I’m delighted to revisit them in print.

Story extract

(If you think £20k is a lot to spend on a sofa, so did I. But I had only been in London for a month or so, back when I was eavesdropping on that particular conversation, so I kept my mouth shut.)

I originally wrote this story as a birthday present for a friend. Her birthday has come around again, so happy birthday L.S.!

Apparition Lit story free to read

On By Julia AugustIn Fiction elsewhere, Short Story

And it’s out!

Anna’s reference to the university at Felsina, the city where Violante had been born, made Violante lean happily forward in her chair. “Do you know people at the university? I always wanted to go to the anatomy at the carnival, but my parents wouldn’t let me. That was before I was married, of course.”

“I studied the anatomy with Jacopo Barigazzi,” Anna said. “He spent some time here not long ago. We dissected one of Pietro’s criminals.” She poured herself wine, then filled Violante’s cup too. “Is that enough? How is Baldesar? I thought he might bring you. Pietro would have liked to see him again.”

“Oh no, he’s too busy with his writing. I’ve brought letters from him, though.”

“Last time, he wrote that you had a problem for me. Do you still?”

Read the rest of ‘Passavanti’s Fantasima’ (and buy the whole amazing issue) here.