It's a Jumble

Stories published near the end of the year sometimes miss out on deserved recognition, which is a shame. Here’s a sample of just some wonderful things I read toward the end of last year.  “Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills in Uncanny It’s a glitch they’ve used before. An errant bit of update code that will block their apps for a day or two. Sal uses them to disable her blood alcohol test whenever her parents are out of town. They download patches every time, but she’s a whiz at writing new ones, and that’s all that Grace needs, just a day or two to corrupt the rabbit test.   A sweeping, epic story of the history of abortion rights in America and beyond. A story that moves back and forth in time, between a chilling surveillance state of the future ( The Handmaid’s Tale with updated tech) to the development of the first urine-based pregnancy tests; a woman abandoned at the altar in 1817 America; the legendary “Jane” underground abortion group in pre-Roe-v-Wade Chicago, and ...

    I have a new story out today! “How to Travel Safely in Faerieland” appears in a special all-novelette issue of Fusion Fragment. It’s one of my favorite pieces so far, and dear to my heart. It’s about modern tourists in a modern-day Faerieland, in way over their heads. It’s also about the distance within families, Asian diaspora feels, and what it means (what does it mean?) to fall in love with a culture and world that’s not your own.   “How to Travel Safely In Faerieland” appears alongside beautiful stories by Angela Liu and Octavia Cade. You can download it for free or pay what you like by going to the link above.

  I think it’s true: we really do live in a “golden age” of short stories. Here are five collections/anthologies of short stories that I read and loved in 2022 (yes, I know this is late!) Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap I’ve long followed Yap’s writing in online outlets, and was thrilled to see her first collection finally come out. Never Have I Ever collects some of my favorite stories and offers new ones as well. There’s delicate magic, longing, and sorrow in “A Cup of Salt Tears,” wherein a woman grieving the upcoming death of her ill husband encounters a kappa—a type of Japanese water spirit—at a spa. There’s delicious horror in “Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?” which looks at the various legends told of a ghost girl on the grounds of a junior high school in the Philippines. There’s a squad of weary superheroes just trying to have an uninterrupted night on the town in “Hurricane Heels (We Go Down Dancing)” and a lush, epic fairy tale of a moon-eating dragon ...

  It’s the year 2080. Australia—and the world at large—is crumbling from the effects of climate change. People must wear air filters and protective gear against radiation each time they step outside. But the lucky ones—like Tao-Yi and her boyfriend Navin—hardly go outside anyway. They barely spend any time at all in the physical world. They spend most of their time in virtual reality. And in 2080, the biggest VR company is about to release their latest product: Gaia, a “Massively Unified Simulated Reality Matrix” which will instantly make all previous products obsolete and which will provide a single platform for all purposes of virtual reality—a place to work, shop, socialize, play, and essentially live.   We’ve been to this place before, of course. From Neal Stephenson’s classic Snow Crash to the Matrix movies and more, we’ve been to many versions of this future—a place where the attractions of a simulated digital reality beckon us away from the real world. We are, in m...

  January 1. A new year. Time to look forward. . . and on this day, a day of quietness and family for me, also a day to look back at the year before.   In terms of professional writing and publishing, 2022 was perhaps my most outwardly successful so far. I published in high-profile, dream markets. I had my first stories narrated in podcasts! I sold a collection of stories. I tried new things that scared me—including my first foray into the personal essay form. Along the way, I made new friends and contacts and had fun.   Some things that happened in 2022, to remind me when I’m feeling down: Published “An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words”  in Lightspeed Magazine, January 2022 (3357 words).  “Before We Drown”  in The Future Fire, January 2022 (flash fiction, ~1000 words). “Once on a Midsummer’s Night”  In GigaNotoSaurus, February 2022 (~7500 words). “The Bones Beneath”  in Podcastle Magazine, June 2022 (5659 word...