Time has got away from me again this month, so it’s just a quick roundup.
Around the start of November, my social media feeds start filling up with awards eligibility posts by SFF writers. I’ve made a couple myself, but always feel a little uneasy doing it. Not because I think writers shouldn’t blow their own trumpets – if you’ve written something you’re proud of, presumably you want people to read it – but because it feels like another way the burden of publicity is shunted off the back of the publishing industry onto writers, even as usable social media platforms where anyone might read what we have to say drop like flies. (Mass return to Dreamwidth, anyone?)
Then again, writing and even publishing feel like a shout into the void much of the time – and while I’d love to be one of those people who writes purely for their own gratification and doesn’t care whether more than three people and a dog read what they put out, the feeling can get dispiriting. So, a list helps, sometimes. It’s good to look back and think, Oh, yeah, I did do that, didn’t I? and That one was pretty good, actually. Makes it all feel a little more concrete.
So, here’s what I published this year. Some are free to read, but not all of them, I'm afraid. If there’s something here you think might be up your street but buying the book or zine isn’t an option for you right now, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do. ;)
Water, Word and Flesh, Kaleidotrope (April 2023)
“So you don’t think—”
I never finished the sentence. Rhys was staring open-mouthed at the telly, the BBC news channel showing shaky phone-camera footage of a great amphibious bulk rising out of the sea, dwarfing the New York skyline. “It has to be a hoax, right?” he said, a pleading note in his voice. “Or a viral trailer for the new Godzilla film or something. It can’t be real.”
“Can’t be,” I echoed.
Hong Kong was next. Paris. London.
After that it was mostly hiding, sticking together as much for safety’s sake as anything else. When we heard Water’s summons, we came running. These days, if someone might be able to protect you, you don’t pass it up.
“Vintage Fur”, Hidden Villains: Arise (April 2023)
Tecca had expected the deepstone to be a hard, bright jewel: a metaphor for power, perfectly crystallized. Instead, it looked like the weathered green glass that sometimes washed up on pebble beaches, but in her hands it felt stickily organic, like bladder wrack or jellyfish. She imagined it might pop if she squeezed it too tightly.
“It’s stronger than it feels,” her mother said, as though reading her mind. “The old gods of the ocean placed their power inside it and entrusted it to us for safekeeping. They taught our ancestors how to speak to it. The deepstone maintains the balance between our world and the one above. If it were ever misused . . .” She trailed off.
“What?” Tecca pressed, impatient.
“We must make sure that never happens,” her mother said.
“Sing Me to Sleep”, Murderbirds (April 2023)
Ben looked so pale against the thin white pillows. They’d shaved his head, something that recruits did to look tough, but that somehow only made Raven more conscious of how fragile he was. She could see all the angles of his skull and kept imagining them caved in like a battered eggshell.
He’d been unconscious for days, but the bags under his eyes were as pronounced as if he’d kept Raven company on all her insomniac nights. There was a still, artificial quality to his facial features, as though he’d been coated in polymer.
Raven sank into the chair beside his bed. “It’s time to wake up,” she told him. “I need you. You always know what to do.”
Silence.
“The Last Good Day” (reprint), Fusion Fragment (June 2023)
She pictures treacly sludge dripping from the sky, gumming up the footpaths. Dust and mud, a world of greys.
But as she tramps home, the sky blooms colours. A dust sunset in hothouse reds and pinks, indigo shot through with orange flame. She can’t help but stop and stare and think that even the apocalypse gives out consolation prizes. A bouquet handed to the ageing diva, humanity, as it dodders offstage, voice and memory shot.
This isn’t the end of the world, Dani reminds herself. It just feels like it, enough so that a good day is a rare, startling thing.
Is this a good day? She isn’t sure she knows what one looks like anymore, or when was the last.
“Diamonds and Pearls” (reprint), PodCastle (September 2023)
Diamonds are two a penny, but everybody wants them anyway.
At first, Osian thinks it’s because they hurt. Every time he speaks a new word in the common tongue and a diamond comes up, it feels like dying, like its hard angles will tear his throat open. Something you have to suffer for like that, you hold on to. You want to believe it’s worth something.
On the other hand, once you’ve brought it up, wiped away the blood and sucked on a lozenge to soothe the soreness, you can pretend a diamond didn’t come out of you at all. It’s such a sharp, mineral thing. Pearls are different — stubbornly organic. They roll out of the throat with ease, sticky only with saliva, and they come with the old tongue. Rounded, with a dull shine, they look like a product of the flesh.
“Sunny Side Up”, Harvest: The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology (October 2023)
In London and on the TV above the counter they are burying the Queen, and in Suzy’s All-American Diner, deep in the arsecrack of the Rhondda, Billy Ferretti is ordering breakfast.
Out of habit, he studies the chalkboard menu that hasn’t changed in six years. The glass that separates the kitchen from the rest of the diner reflects back a street shuttered and silent as a Sunday in the eighties, empty but for a couple of teenagers walking a grey-muzzled staffie and Denny Lewis the pisshead waiting across the street for a bus that won’t come. Sleepy unease blankets the valley and everyone outside in it — outside in defiance of the great and pious communion taking place across the land right now, settees turned mourning benches, TV signals interlocking like prayerful hands. You could be forgiven for thinking it was magic, mass hypnosis, an occult ritual.
You could be forgiven for imagining that, somewhere not-here, a lever in a great cosmic machine is waiting to drop.
Somewhere not-here, a sorcerer is gathering his ingredients and practising the Latin pronunciation of a spell.
“Shadows Like Hunting Sharks”, ZNB Presents (November 2023)
The Northern Line was twenty-six degrees and airless, and the patch over my cursed eye itched like hell.
A puff of stale air hit me in the face as the train doors opened, admitting a duo of Amy Winehouse pilgrims in leopard-print and eyeliner, a lone mother struggling to manoeuvre her pram, and a suit who clutched his Evening Standard to his chest like a protective barrier against the hoi polloi. He frowned at me as I shuffled down the aisle, and I did my best to stop squinting.
The itch didn’t budge. It seemed to grow legs and wriggle, like an ant trapped in the corner of my right eye.
I wasn’t supposed to touch it. The balancer I’d paid five hundred pounds to curse me had been adamant on that point. Not a peek, not a sliver of sunlight, for at least three months after the curse. I sat on my hands.
“Crumbs”, New Welsh Reader (out tomorrow!)
“The kids with your parents?”
Matthew gave a noncommittal hum, which she interpreted as confirmation, and proffered a spoonful of pasta sauce. “Does this need more thyme?”
Vanessa set down her bags and went into the kitchen, noting as she did so that the place was unexpectedly tidy. The idea he thought she’d object to toys on the floor or juice-stains on the counter troubled her, but she didn’t say so. She resolved to ignore the emptiness and the faint unsettlement she felt.
But later, after an excellent spag bol and an adequate shag, she woke in the early hours of the morning. At first, she put it down to the unfamiliar bed or the security light of the house opposite, which flooded the room with violent halide white at every passing footstep.
But everything was dark. From the gloom, small voices: “Daddy? Daddy, we came home.”
Writing news:
Just in case you skipped the above – I have a new story out tomorrow in New Welsh Reader. “Crumbs” is a ghost story, and a story about a woman who’s made self-abnegation her whole personality. You can order copies of the magazine and subscriptions from the website.
The Kickstarter for the Hidden Villains: Betrayed anthology, featuring my fantasy novelette “Light as Air”, is also live now. The book is already fully funded, with two weeks remaining to get your mitts on a pre-order.
Coming up next year, I’ll have a new story appearing in a future issue of the ever-excellent Fusion Fragment. “Remember Me as My Best Self” is about grieving, and what happens when capitalism gets its hands on our memories. Look out for it in the spring.
What I've been reading
I’m currently about a quarter of the way through
by Helen MacDonald and Sin Blaché – a breezy, popcorny SF novel, which is not always my thing, but has been a welcome breath of fresh air after some of the heavier stuff I’ve been reading lately. Plus the mystery at its heart is, so far, genuinely creepy.
What I've been watching
I’ll be very surprised if I’m the first person to tell you to go and watch
Blue Eye Samurai
on Netflix, but it really is very good, a bloody but surprisingly thoughtful revenge tale.
What I've been listening to
I’m slowly making my way through the first season of the
podcast, which is a deep dive into the discography of my favourite band, Manic Street Preachers. It’s occasionally frustrating (the balance of bits and in-jokes vs talking about the topic at hand is, uh, a bit too skewed toward the former for me) but it’s fun to hear the perspectives of people encountering some of my old favourites for the first time, and it’s inspired me to dig out some albums I haven’t really listened to in a long while. ‘S nice.
That's all from me for this month. 'Til next time.
JL