It's a Jumble

  The winter solstice is past, Christmas and New Year’s are coming. In this brief breath before the major holidays, perhaps you’ll have time to sit with a hot drink and a short story or two. If so, here are some to consider.   Stories of Strangeness and Horror, Dark and Light “Two Motes in the Zuegma Dark” by Sagan Lee in Lightspeed Jules let go of Scarpe’s hand and walked carefully to one side of the platform. “Ever been up close?” “Only on TV.” “You haven’t seen it ‘til you’ve seen it,” Jules said, giddy with the cheesiness of the line. Without looking, he reached for the lever that was right where he knew it would be. It gave way with a satisfying thunk. They were blinded a second time as the hangar bay flooded with light.   A hot-shot pilot impresses his dates by taking them to see Big Blue, the giant battle-mech that he pilots. But things go unexpectedly awry on this particular date. Giant battle-mechs. Jellyfish in outer space! A first date that goe...

  I did it: I started in September, and I have now read the entirety of Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone , all five volumes as published in the Penguin Classic edition (translation of vol 1-3 by David Hawkes and vol 4-5 by John Minford), each volume ~400-500 pages and in tiny font, single-spaced.   It feels like waking from a dream.   And what a dream! This strange, mesmerizing, shape-shifter of novel. It starts out like a xianxia c-drama ! (why did no one tell me that?) A sentient stone spirit (made and then abandoned by the goddess Nu-wa) falls for a Crimson Pearl Flower and waters her with sweet dew until she becomes a fairy girl. She pledges to someday repay him with her tears. The flower and stone are then both reborn in the human world to meet one another and live out their fates. And here the story shifts, for long periods of time, to something like a 19 th century English novel of manners. The stone is reincarnated as boy named Bao-yu and the f...

  The year’s not yet over, but it’s that time when writers begin posting about their award-eligible work. This year I had four short stories published. I would be honored if you took a look at any of them.   “The Cold Inside”  (dark fantasy, 4300 words) in  Metaphorosis . March 2024.   A story about a ghost who knocks on a door. A story about grief and guilt, set among the woods and water of northern Michigan. Featured in writer  K.C. Mead-Brewer’s weekly newsletter (March 6, 2024):  “Vanessa Fogg’s prose always braids tight with poetry, and her tale “ The Cold Inside ” is no different; a life may be a story, but a ghost is always a poem.” Featured in Maria Haskin’s  March 2024 Short Fiction Roundup : “A hauntingly beautiful and chilling (in more ways than one) story about grief and loss. . .  a delicate and profound unspooling of emotions, love, regret, and loneliness.”   “Th...

  My latest story is out! “ That Small, Hard Thing on the Back of Your Neck” appears in this month’s issue of The Future Fire, alongside a great lineup of writers and artists. It’s a weird little bit of body horror, and a story about the masks/skins we wear.

Some stories I’ve read recently.   Tales of Strangeness, Beauty, and Horror “Cicadas, and Their Skins” by Avra Margariti in Strange Horizons  I spent my first summer as an orphan watching cicadas fuck, scream, and molt. Wasn’t long before I plucked one of the cicada skins from the dry village soil. I brushed it clean against my secondhand clothes I was already beginning to outgrow. Dappled by sunlight, the carapace looked hard though I knew it to be brittle. A coat, people called it. To me it looked like a veil I yearned to slip into.   A fierce, angry, bloody tale. An orphaned girl has lost her mother and moved from the city to a small, stultifying village. Watching the cicadas, she learns that she can slip into a cicada’s skin. She can find herself in the skins of mice, birds, and more. And she can teach the other children of the village to do the same. An angry tale of wildness, of desperation and freedom, of seeking escape from the judgmental eyes of th...

“Bao-yu had from early youth grown up among girls. . .As a result of this upbringing, he had come to the conclusion that the pure essence of humanity was all concentrated in the female of the species and that males were its mere dregs and off-scourings. To him, therefore, all members of his own sex without distinction were brutes who might just as well have not existed.”       --Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone, by Cao Xueqin (1710-1765), translation by David Hawkes (Volume 1 of the Penguin Classic Edition)  

  I loved Ephiny Gale’s first collection of short stories, Next Curious Thing , and so I jumped at the chance for a review copy of her second, Pick Your Potion . It’s a worthy follow-up of strange and beautiful stories, by turns gentle and warm and then harrowing and brutal. The book’s back cover copy describes it as “a full apothecary’s bar of speculative stories,” and it’s an apt description. Gale showcases a range of moods, styles and genres in this book, ranging from science fiction to fantasy to horror and hybridities among these three.   Some of my favorite stories in this collection embrace warmth and comfort.   New lovers find one another on a divided generation spaceship in “Solace” and in a magical orchard in “The Orchard.” In other stories, old lovers find one another in different forms, or friends finally recognize the romantic spark between them. One of my favorites was “All the Times I’m Ten,” a twist on the “chosen one” trope that manages to feel both f...

So many beautiful, strange stories I’ve read this summer so far. Here are only a few. Strange Tales of Beauty and Horror “Markets of the Otherworld” by Rati Mehrotra in Uncanny Magazine In the Market of Illusions, I writhed on the cobblestoned street that wound between the gilded stalls, gasping for air, convinced I was a goldfish. Someone dragged me to a fountain and pushed me in, breaking the spell and—a minor point, except the water was ice cold—drenching me to the skin.   In the Cat Market, I was pursued by a large white Persian and coerced into signing away a month of my life in return for the privilege of petting her. In my dreams, I still run my fingers through her thick, beautiful fur while she leans against me and hums in pleasure. Worth it, I tell myself, even as I wonder which month of life has been taken from me.   An absolutely gorgeous, magical, and at times melancholy tale of a woman traveling through the enchanting markets of other worlds. A story ...

  Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park, Washington state. Ten days in the Pacific Northwest, among mountains, sea, and moss-draped forests. And while I was there, I had two new stories come out and two new stories accepted.   “The Red Queen’s Heart,” at Lightspeed is a story about a magical night market. It’s also about a conquering queen, and what we give up to survive. I go into some detail about inspirations for the story in the accompanying author spotlight, and there’s a fabulous narration by Stefan Rudnicki in the podcast.   My second story of the month is “Remembering Day” at Uncharted Magazine, and this one is particularly dear to my heart. It’s a far-future story about mind-uploading, but it’s really an ode to the bodies and minds that we have right now. Finally, I have a weird little dark fantasy/horror piece out this October in The Future Fire , and another weird fantasy/horror piece coming out in The Deadlands at some unspecified date. Story publi...