Category: My Short Stories

Where No One Sleeps to be Published in Andromeda Spaceways

Happy April friends!

The contract is signed, sealed, and delivered, so I can finally share that my historical fantasy story “Where No One Sleeps” is going to be published in Issue 90 of Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. Yay!

“Where No One Sleeps” is set in Argentina shortly after the end of World War II. It’s about a young Italian immigrant grappling with grief and memory and homesickness, along with a magical power that makes all of that a lot harder to handle. When I was writing this story, I drew on my own knowledge of Italian history and family stories about my great-grandfather, who immigrated to Argentina from Italy before eventually settling in the United States, so “Where No One Sleeps” is close to my heart. I can’t wait for you to read it!

Duet for a Soloist Is Out!

Hello friends! My short story “Duet for a Soloist” is out today in Electric Spec. This is another story set in my musical Phoenix world, Cantabile. It has a smaller scope than some of my other Cantabilie—focusing on a set of twins trying to find themselves—but it’s full of powerful emotions.

You can read “Duet for a Soloist” here, and find out more about the world of Cantabile, including links to all my published stories, background on those stories, and the music that inspired them, here.

Enjoy!

Some Long Overdo Website Updates and Two New Short Stories Coming Soon

Happy February, friends!

I feel like February always gets flack for being a bad month, but personally I like February. Here in D.C., the days are starting to get a bit longer and there are hints of spring in the air (not today precisely, but in February in general). Best of all, February is short, so before you know it, it’s March, and real spring is just around the corner.

January was a pretty rough month, but I’m crossing my fingers that it was just the remnants of the curse that was 2022, and things will be looking up from here. My knee is getting stronger and stronger every day, and I have lots and lots to look forward to in the months ahead.

So to start out February, I’ve finished up some updates to the website that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. First, I realized that I hadn’t written the story behind the story posts for my last two published short stories. Those are up now, so you can check out the story behind “Roomba Requires Your Attention” here and the story behind “Noa and the Dragon” here.

Next, I have redone the page with additional information about my short stories set in the world where everyone has a magical bond with their musical instruments and they use the magic created by playing their instruments to strengthen the Phoenix who carries the world. I have named the world Cantabile, and you can find more information about the world and links to all the stories set in Cantabile that I’ve had published on the new Cantabile Stories page here. The page is still a work in progress. I plan to add maps, some of the illustrations I’ve done, and links to the playlist I made for this world. If there’s anything else you think it would be cool for me to add to this page, just let me know and I’ll do my best to make it happen.

I’m still trying to figure out how I want to deal with my book recs page. It’s feeling a bit unwieldy, and I’d like to reorganize, but I haven’t figured out quite how yet. I hope to have it back up soon.

Finally, I’m really excited to share with you all that I got two short story acceptances in January. I’m still waiting on the contract for one, so I’m going to hold off sharing those details just now. But I can definitely tell you now that my story “Duet for a Soloist” will be published in Electric Spec at the end of February. This is my fourth story set in Cantabile to be published, incidentally, and I’m so excited that it’s found a home! I can’t wait for you all to read it, and I can’t wait to tell you more about the second short story I’ll have coming out in the next few months.

More soon!

January 2023 Update

Hello friends! I can’t believe we’re already at the end of January. It feels like this month has flown by, and also like it has moved incredibly slowly. In other words, it feels like it’s January.

I know one of my goals for 2023 was to post more on my blog (a perennial theme at this point), but my January was packed and stressful, so I’m letting myself off the hook for this month. I do have a whole list of things I want to write about, so stay tuned.

So what happened in January?

I had knee surgery.

Turns out knee surgery is a pretty big deal.

I spent the first half of January in a muddle of really bad pre-surgery anxiety. That comes with the territory when you’ve had fifteen eye operations as a kid. But everyone at the hospital was really fabulous at making sure I was calm and comfortable, and the surgery went well.

Then I spent the second half of January in a muddle of recovering. It’s been a lot, and it hasn’t been without hiccups. My stomach objected to the whole enterprise, forcefully and in just about every way a stomach could object. Then I had something that was possibly a blood clot. But I’m improving every day. I started using crutches a week after surgery, and now, two weeks after surgery, I’m down to one crutch and I’ve started physical therapy. Basically, I’m mobile enough to be very frustrated with how far I still have to go. I hope to be back on a bike this summer, but I’d also happily settle for being rid of this giant brace on my leg and being able to walk around without pain and without my kneecap dislocating. I do want to give a huge shout-out to all the family and friends who have stayed with me, taken care of me and my Neutron boy, sent cookies, and just dropped by to hang out and cheer me up.

With all this going on, most of my other regular pursuits have fallen a bit by the wayside. I only read three books in January, partly because I’m busy and partly because I’m still in a reading slump, though I think I might be coming out of it. My favorite book of January was THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND, the first book in Jonathan Stroud’s BARTIMAEUS TRILOGY. It had both a really compelling and humorous voice and really well done tension. I’m halfway through the second book and enjoying that quite a lot too. Perhaps I will write a blog post about the whole series when I’ve finished.

I also really enjoyed THE MARVELLERS by Dhonielle Clayton. This was a really fun, creative, and diverse take on the traditional magical school story, and I’d definitely recommend everyone check it out—though full disclosure, I did struggle with the audiobook narrator for this one, and I usually don’t have problems with audiobook narrators. I’ve been reading a lot of magical school stories in the last few months, so I’m thinking I might do a post on what those stories look like these days.

After a few weeks without much progress on my own work, I am writing again, slowly but surely. This is also helping to improve my mood immensely. I’m one of those authors who gets very cranky when I don’t write for more than a few days. I’ve decided that my writing goal for 2023 is to finish the two manuscripts I’m working on. If I have time, I have a stretch goal of going to look back at one of my older projects and do some work toward reimagining it and/or disecting it for parts, but that’s definitely a stretch goal. Otherwise, I’ve been brainstorming some ideas for fun writing posts for this blog.

Oh, one more thing. I received two short story acceptances in January. The contracts aren’t all signed, sealed, and delivered yet, so I can’t share more details, but watch this spot! I’m really excited for you to read both of these little tales.

More soon! I hope your 2023 is off to a good start and you have a happy February!

Roomba Requires Your Attention Published in Kaleidotrope

Hello friends. I know it’s been a while since I posted. It’s been a pretty rough few months, honestly, but I have a few posts lined up I’m really excited to share with you in the end of 2022.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you all that my short story “Roomba Requires Your Attention” was published in Kaleidotrope last month. You can read it here.

This little story means a lot to me, because it actually got me out of the serious writer’s block I was struggling with in my second year of law school. That writer’s block, and this story as the key to overcoming it, taught me a lot about how I need to treat writing goals and take care of myself as a writer so I can keep telling the stories I love. Also, this story might be one of the funniest things I’ve written, and it was a lot of fun to marry the stress of what I was studying in law school with a near-future AI apocalypse.

I really hope you enjoy reading “Roomba Requires Your Attention” as much as I enjoyed writing it.

More soon!

Another Short Story Publication Incoming

Hello my friends, and happy December! I know I’ve been a bit absent from this blog for the last few months, despite all my best intentions. I promise there’s a bunch coming down the pipeline in the next couple weeks, as I get all my year end posts ready to go.

In the meantime, I wanted to share that my short story “Roomba Requires Your Attention” is going to be published by Kaleidotrope. This little story, about law students living through the start of the AI apocalypse, was the story that got me out of the longest writer’s block I have ever experienced, back from the end of 2017 through the spring of 2018, so it’s really special to me. It’s also kind of a funny story, which I don’t manage to write that often because funny is hard friends. I can’t wait for you to read it, and I will share more details as soon as I have them.

Artificial Divide Published

Hello friends. We have reached the end of October and I can’t believe it. I still think it’s August, and the warm weather isn’t helping. I’ve been really busy with work and writing and friends in the last couple months, and I just don’t understand where the fall went. I also just realized the Artificial Divide anthology, which includes my story “Noa and the Dragon,” came out a couple weeks ago and I haven’t shared the news.

Artificial Divide is an anthology of stories by blind authors, about blind characters. It isn’t meant to be about blindness, though of course blindness is a big part of it. It’s about blind people having their own stories, with their own agency, told accurately. It’s incredibly important and I’m glad to be part of it. My story, “Noa and the Dragon,” is set in a secondary fantasy world and is about a young girl who goes blind and how she learns to navigate safely and independently and rediscovers the joy and power of reading. This was the first story I wrote about a blind character, and the hope and vulnerability I put into it makes it really special to me.

You can find the Artificial Divide anthology here on Amazon, or wherever you prefer to buy your books. If you’re a fan of audiobooks, I actually got to narrate my story for the audio version of the anthology, which was a really cool experience. To my blind friends, the book does not appear to be up on Bookshare or Bard yet but I know the publisher and editors are working on that. Please go check out the anthology, and I hope you enjoy reading “Noa and the Dragon” as much as I enjoyed writing it.

P.S. I will put up a more detailed story behind the story page for this one ASAP. And I realize I also owe you a story behind the story post for another story I had published this year. Bear with me. It’s coming. I promise.

August Update: Writing, Writing, and More Writing

Yes, I know I said I was going to try and get posts out more frequently, and I know it’s mid-September and I’m just now talking about August, but honestly I’ve spent the last couple weeks trying to figure out what happened to August and what I actually did. It felt like August lasted forever, but at the same time it just slid on by in a haze of hot, stormy weather and a whole lot of writing.

I did get to spend a long weekend at home with my family, which was fun, even if I squeezed all my regular doctor and dentist appointments into that time. Sidenote, flying has become really stressful. I also had some fun hangouts with my writing group where we chatted and actually got writing done. A good friend from college is moving to the D.C. area in the next couple weeks, and I also got to visit with her when she came out to apartment hunt.

Otherwise, I mostly took Neutron for walks when it wasn’t too hot or pouring rain, and I wrote. I finished my latest draft of my book, and I wrote two short short stories and a poem in August, which is just crazy. I also definitely started feeling the urge to start drafting a new book, which makes sense because I’ve pretty much been revising my book-length projects since 2019. So I snuck in an outline for the project I want to work on for National Novel Writing Month this year. I’m so excited for this one I’m not sure I can wait until November to start though.

I mentioned this on the blog a few weeks ago, but just in case you missed it, my short story “Moon by Moon We Go Together” was also published in August in the Triangulation: Habitats anthology. You can get the anthology here, and you can read more about where the story came from right over here.

While I was really productive on the writing side in August, I feel like I’ve fallen into a bit of a reading slump. It’s been worse this month than it was in August, but I’ve been having a hard time picking up new books and getting into them, even if it’s something I’m really excited to read. Once I’m into the book, I’m fine, but then when I finish it will be a few days before I pick up something new, which isn’t how I’ve been reading for the last couple years. It might be because I’ve been listening to so much of the Writing Excuses podcast, because all those episodes are so short and digestible and I’m learning so much. It’s easy to say, “I’ll just listen to one more.” But I also think I’m just generally tired, and while I’ve read some books I’ve really enjoyed, most of what I’ve read in the last few months has only been okay. I’ve read so much in the last couple years, and I feel like I’m getting picky.

I only read five books in August. A couple, like Sourdough and Honey Girl, were really fun but didn’t quite come together for me for various reasons. I really enjoyed Zero G by Dan Wells, though it felt like the author was a bit didactic on the science of how gravity works on a spaceship, even for a middle grade book. I was also a huge fan of the third Mysterious Benedict Society book, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. I love these children and all their crazy adventures! My one complaint on that is that it sort of feels like the kids have less and less agency with each book, but that’s a very minor complaint for me because I love all this so much. (Relatedly, I did finally finish the Mysterious Benedict Society show and it was great! Would definitely recommend.

My absolute favorite book of August, though, was The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. This is the first book in her Lady Astronaut series. The third book is nominated for a Hugo, as is the whole series, so I decided I better read them all. And between this and my love for For All Mankind, the show on Apple TV, I’ve realized I’m definitely a fan of alternate history/science fiction about the space race. The Calculating Stars is about a woman trying to open the astronaut program to women after a meteor strikes Earth in 1952. The impact will cause massive climate change, necessitating outer space colonies. And it is amazing! You should all go read it now!

And that’s it for August. Let me know what you’ve been up to, and if you’ve read any of the books I mention here, I’d love to discuss them.

Short Story News

I have a bunch of great news for you all this week.

First, the anthology Triangulation: Habitats was published this week. It includes my story “Moon by Moon We Go Together,” about how building sustainable space colonies can go wrong, the evolution of meaning in music, and general space is neat vibes. You can grab a copy of the anthology here. It’s available in paperback and Kindle additions. And once you’ve read the story, you can head over here to read about where I got the idea and how I wrote it. Writing this story was really an adventure for me, and I really hope you enjoy reading it.

The other news is that you can now preorder the Artificial Divide anthology, which will be published next month and contains my fantasy story “Noa and the Dragon.” Artificial Divide is an anthology of stories by blind writers about blind characters. I can’t wait for you all to read it. You can preorder it in a number of formats. Preorder a paperback copy here, or an ebook or audiobook copy here. Fun fact, I actually narrated my own story for the audiobook, which was a lot of fun.

Moon by Moon We Go Together to Be Published in Triangulation: Habitats

Hello friends! I am so excited to share with you that my short story “Moon by Moon We Go Together” is going to be published in the anthology Triangulation: Habitats. Triangulation is an annual anthology published by Parsec Inc. For the past three years, the themes have been environmental. Triangulation: Habitats explores sustainable living, and my story is about the consequences of colonizing the solar system. I am so happy “Moon by Moon” has found a home in Triangulation: Habitats (pun intended), and I can’t wait to share it with you. The anthology will be published in August. You can learn more and help support the anthology here.