Only slightly belated: my story Unravelling is now up at Lackington’s, along with the rest of a wonderful issue! The Issue 5 theme is ‘beldams’, with a focus on deconstruction, and my story does feature the rather literal deconstruction of a witch, so… take that as a content warning, I guess, if a little gore is not quite your thing. And look out for the Turkish drop spindle in Paula Arwen Owen’s great illustration! ❤
For the curious, the real thing looks like this:
I’ll post about this again when it goes live online, but Lackington’s Issue 5 (theme: beldams) is now available and includes a rather dark fairytale of mine with a fabulous illustration by Paula Arwen Owen! Buy it! Buy it for the pretty pictures! And the stories, of course.
So this is the other good news about ‘Drowning in Sky’: you can’t read it for free, but you can now listen to it over at PodCastle! So many thanks to Abra Staffin-Wiebe for a wonderful reading, and to Rachael K. Jones for a wonderful introduction. ❤ And if you did want to read it, you can get all of Women Destroy Fantasy! here.
So Women Destroy Fantasy! is a real thing that definitely exists (I have external confirmation that I am not solipsistically hallucinating this… though I guess that doesn’t mean much if we’re going to carry solipsism to its logical conclusion) and I have a story in the book version, which you can get hold of here! I am thrilled and amazed and slightly terrified about this: it’s my first pro sale and the first story that sold on first submission, and I am so deeply grateful to Cat Rambo for picking ‘Drowning in Sky’ out of slush. ❤ Importantly, I’ve had the proofs of this for the last couple of weeks, so I can say for certain that everything in this massive special issue is amazing, starting with Kate Hall’s story The Scrimshaw and The Scream, which you can read for free on the Fantasy Magazine site.
All going well, there should be another piece of news about ‘Drowning in Sky’ soon, but since it isn't currently available for free I'll say here that it's a pretty busy story. There's an author spotlight in which I talk about some of the things that went into it (the Arachne myth / the sinking of Helike / the statue of Nike Apteros), but other ingredients include a line borrowed from Aristotle, the ancient Athenian festival of Anthesteria, and probably some things I’ve already forgotten. And if you were curious about how Ann, who certainly hasn’t read Plato’s account of the death of Socrates in the Phaedo, jumped to a certain conclusion so quickly, well, my Lakeside Circus flash Aqua Vitalis has the answer.
I have a tiny new flash story up at Lightning Cake Lit: The Words of the Maguš to Kūruš, King of Kings, with a lovely illustration by Jen Muir. I wanted to be part of this ‘zine as soon as I saw it – flash, pictures, tumblr and cake! what’s not to like?
So the Parsec Ink anthology Triangulation: Parch is a thing, and I have a story in it called ‘Bitter Water’, which I’m very pleased about, because it involves some of my favourite characters in one of my favourite imaginary places. And also because I should be getting a paper copy in the post in the near future, which will be lovely. This is not dark fantasy! It’s closer to sword & sworcery, I think, or perhaps just secondary world adventure fantasy. Expect sand, bandits, extremely aggrieved merchants, alarming spirit-haunted mountains and some rather unkind practical jokers. And certainly expect a lot more great stories by great authors to go with it.
Many thanks to the editor, Stephen V. Ramey, for some very thorough editing work. I’m sure he didn’t mean to make me feel like I’d been flayed alive…
I have a new short story up in Issue 2 of Lackington’s Magazine! It involves Romans, steampunk and civil wars, and even if you aren’t interested in any of these things you should certainly check out the beautiful pictures and the other beautiful stories. And consider buying a copy!
❤ to Ranylt Richildis for the truly humane editing. Thank you!
Artwork by Derek Newman-Stille.
JULIA AUGUST 