Tag Archives: Diabolical Plots

2022 Short Fiction Round Up 2

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Time for some more short fiction I want to share with you all. It’s been a couple weeks since the last post (which was the first of the year) and I figure I should make a note about the schedule I plan to keep as I try to once again not get derailed off this project. My desire is to make weekly recommendation posts, but I’m giving myself permission to not feel bad at all if it slips to bi-weekly at times. Too often when I start missing my own self-imposed deadlines I start feeling bad and then I start not wanting to think about it at all which makes it harder to get done which leads to more missed deadlines and more feeling bad and and and I think you see where I’m going with this, yeah? So that’s the goal: weekly, but not feeling bad if it isn’t.

Often when I’m reading and picking out stories for these posts I find themes and patterns start to emerge, and I always find that interesting and fun, but this week is a little different because I decided to actively seek out stories that fit a theme I wanted. That theme? I wanted stories that made me happy. That I would want to read again because they made me so happy. Every story I recommend is a story I like, and that I think are really good. That’s not the same thing as saying every story I recommend makes me happy. It’s been a hard couple weeks for so many people everywhere. It always is you might say, but these couple weeks have felt extra so.

And so I chose to look for the happy. That’s come out in different ways as you’ll see below. Not every story is funny or joyful, though there’s a good helping of that, but for me each of these stories left me feeling good. Made me want to read them again and let them put a smile on my face, whether that smile was the aftermath of a burst of laughter or bittersweet and tinged with memory. It is my sincere wish that you find something here that makes you smile and a little happy too.

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2021 Short Fiction Round Up 7

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Well, the streak was broken. After six straight weeks of roundups I missed getting one done last week. I’m back now though with the 7th installment of the round up for the year and another five stories I read and enjoyed this past week. We’ve got all sorts of stories here. Selections from a travel guide, a horror story with a monster, a more adventure style storry with a monster hunter, a story of a new romance, and a story of trying to put an end to an unsuccessful one. Hopefully that range should mean everyone can find something here to like for themselves.

“Destinations of Beauty” by Alexander Weinstein from Lightspeed #129

This was an interesting piece that is the latest in a series of travel guide style entries “From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide” written by author Alexander Weinstein that have been published in Lightspeed since January of 2020. This was my first time reading part of this series but I’ll definitely be reading through the previous entries. This one focuses on, as the name says, destinations exemplifying beauty in some way, but not necessarily happiness by any means. In fact, there is much in these entries that feel filled with the bittersweet, the melancholy, the nostalgic. Many entries feel written by a very weary traveler finding glimpses of very weary people. Despite all that though, I also find myself feeling a bit of longing reading these. The longing for travel we currently can’t partake in, and the unique memories of finding a special place at the end of a too long and tiring day of exploration that will stay with you for the rest of your life. These stories are written by someone who has traveled and explored and they will resonate a bit more for that with readers who have as well.

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2021 Short Fiction Round Up 2

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The roundup returns with 5 more stories I’d like to share with you. 5 things I read this week and enjoyed. There is a lot of dark and horror on the slate this week but there is also some pure fun and funny of the light hearted and macabre sort. Every story this week is available to read for free, though I always encourage you to support your favorite magazines when and if you can. By word of mouth for stories you particularly like if nothing else. Now, on with the recommendations!

“There, in the Woods” by Clara Madrigano from The Dark #68

Kicking things off with a good old ‘there is something in the woods’ story. It’s grim (though not gruesome) and the weight of near-hopelessness descends by the end but the story drew me in, much like the woods our protagonist lives by, and I found myself wanting to stay with it to the end. After, as I thought more and more about the story of Lucy and the creepy land and forest that has taken her parents, her husband, and a local boy she didn’t even know I found myself trying to decide if she had been fated to some kind of doom from the moment, as a child, when her parents moved the family to their new house by the woods, or from the moment she let herself fall for her husband Nick. Perhaps one led, in an inevitable sort of way, to the other. “There, in the Woods” feels like, as Chuck Wendig has described Paul Tremblay’s writing, “supernatural-adjacent” horror and it is the parts of the story that would be unsettling even if there weren’t something in the woods that will likely leave you thinking over the story again later.

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2020 Short Fiction Roundup 2

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Welcome again to a Short Fiction Roundup of some stories I’ve enjoyed reading in the last week or so and hope you might too. If you do enjoy any of these stories consider sharing them and giving them a shout out yourself. It’s a great way to support short fiction. We’ve been in a short speculative fiction golden age for awhile now let’s keep it going.

“When Hope is Lost, Touch Remains” by Nin Harris from PodCastle 620

A story I would call lovely, though perhaps that might put me in a strange light to some. Maria moves through her life trying to grapple with a strange discovery she makes about herself: the fact that she can literally draw out men’s souls, a feat usually performed, unnoticed by the men, during sex. She can, thankfully, also return them and this power becomes a central fact of her life as she moves through it trying to figure out who she is and wants to be while unraveling a complicated family heritage. Serious bonus points for this being a story of a middle-aged woman, it feels both rare and nice to have a story acknowledging that figuring out who you are isn’t exclusively the realm of the young.

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Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 13

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If this week’s Round Up has a theme it might be best described as stories I don’t/can’t 100% understand.1Like all my makeshift, and always made in hindsight, themes this one does not apply to *every* story in the Round Up. That might sound like a pretty silly theme or one not to recommend itself too well, but it absolutely should not reflect on the stories or be taken as judgement on their quality.

The idea that all good stories should be universal, that they should somehow be of equal appeal, or equally accessible, to any reader is one I don’t believe in. Such an idea relies upon a belief in a universal common experience that is far more unhealthy myth than reality, and often a result of a failure, usually by people in societal majorities, to understand that there are experiences separate from their own. But, to paraphrase something I said in the 11th Round Up: If you’re going to read widely, and I think you should, you’re going to read things for which you aren’t the intended primary audience and which you may not “get” in the same way or to the same extent as someone who is. That’s OK. That’s good even. The world is so much more than our own familiar comfort zones, and so much better for it.

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Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 4

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Week 4! We’ve made it a month! Also, for the second week in a row I have a full compliment of 7 stories to share with you (though over on Mastodon I had to double up the recs one day to hit it as flu laid me low and broke my daily streak over there). You can now find a list of links to all the Weekly Roundups here.

This week we have a range of things, including a couple stories that really hit the 2017 feels for me, our first repeat author, and something incredibly fun. Of course, they’re all worth reading or I wouldn’t have recommended them. Finally, a special note: Many of the magazines these stories come from are taking a significant financial hit right now (through no fault of their own) due to the current fiasco happening with Patreon (which is Patreon’s fault). If you enjoy short fiction I urge you to consider supporting the places that produce it, if you can, in whatever method available you’re comfortable with.

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