It's a Jumble

  This is a follow-up to Forrest’s first novelette from Annorlunda Books, An Inconvenient God. Both books star Decommissioner Thirty-Seven, known as “Sweeting” to her friends. However, both books can be read independently; I loved An Inconvenient God (here’s my capsule review  at the end of this post!), but you do not need to read it first to enjoy Lagoonfire ! But if you did enjoy the first book, you will love the follow-up, which deepens our understanding of Sweeting, her past, and her world. Sweeting is a decommissioner at the Ministry of Divinities; her job is to officially retire, or “decommission” gods who are fading away due to a lack of human worshippers. Years ago, Sweeting had decommissioned Laloran-morna, god of the warm ocean waves of Sweet Harbor. She successfully retired Laloran-morna into mortal form, but something went wrong: even as a mortal, he retains aspects of his old divinity. Now flooding has disrupted the commercial development of an estuary in Swee...

I have a new story out today! “A Vial of Electric Blue” appears in Issue #5 of Fusion Fragment Magazine, a lovely new journal that publishes science fiction and science fiction-tinged stories, often with a surreal bent. My story is most definitely on the strange and surreal side. It’s about isolation and imprisonment, the rage of women and girls, and strange lakes of electric-blue fire. The accompanying illustration is by KiTT St. Joans, and they’ve done a stunning job; I’m in love with their art. You can see more of ST. Joans’ art here .    And by following the link on my story title above, you can download the entire issue to read (for free, or pay what you like).   Fusion Fragment is unusual among new SFF journals in that it offers print copies of their magazine as well as digital! I got my contributor’s copy last week, and it’s the first time I’ve ever held a print journal with my work in it! And I’ve already read and loved some of the stories in this issue, whi...

  It’s March. As people have been saying online, it feels as though it’s always been March. A year since the pandemic truly hit American shores. Time has been distorted since then, and the last few months here in America have felt particularly surreal, twisting and pulling time out of all recognition.   But after a bitterly cold freeze, it’s warming out now where I live, and Spring hesitantly steps near. And some amazing fiction has been published in the last few months—dark, angry, strange, beautiful, and lit with hope. Here’s some of what I’ve loved.   Stories in Strange Horizons "The Karyobinga Sings to Jiro" by Ryu Ando Are we truly all the same person?  he said aloud to the darkness.  Is my pain everyone’s pain? A just-over-flash-length-piece of grief and mystery. Jiro is an elderly widower in a dying small town, grieving the loss of his wife. He lives alone, and his son is trying to get him to move. And then one day a mysterious bird appears ...