2022 Short Fiction Round Up 3

And we’re back! Time again for another round up of stories I’ve read recently and liked so much I just had to share them with you all and shout them out to the best of my ability. There’s no real theme this week other than my genuinely enjoying all of these stories and wanting to encourage others to give them a try too and I’m afraid I find myself without the mental energy to say much more than that in this intro. I’ve been up since 4am as I right this because I had to get my kid to his school for his grade 8 grad trip by 5. So the brain is not at it’s best! There’s plenty more capable thought below though talking about the actual stories. Please, read on, check them out, see if something grabs your attention.

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2021 Short Fiction Round Up 3

It’s week 3 for the Short Fiction Roundup here in 2021 and I am so happy that this week I’m kicking off the recommendations with stories from two magazines that have never been featured here before.

Constelación is a brand new bilingual speculative fiction magazine that will publish quarterly and all of it’s content will be published in both Spanish and English. Fusion Fragment started publishing last year and is on its fourth issue. I’m a big fan of the design and overall approach of this magazine. It’s a gorgeous presentation and has wonderful innovations such as key word tags for each story, and book recommendations from each author in the issue.

Stories from Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod, and Tor.com round out the Round Up.

“The Badger’s Digestion; or The First First-Hand Description of Deneskan Beastcraft by an Aouwan Researcher” by Malka Older from Constelación Magazine #1

So I can’t lie. When deciding which story from Constelación to read first I looked over it’s content warning page1A feature I think every magazine should employ. Some do. But all should. and I chose the one that had none. That’s the kind of story I wanted at that particular moment – something to get lost in without thorns to have to be wary of and that is exactly what I got! A lovely, fascinating story with an ending that snuck up and knocked me over with how perfect it was. The theme of this first issue of Constelación is “The bonds that unite us” and this story takes it that to a very literal extreme as it follows a researcher visiting a foreign country to learn more of their legendary Beasts: kaiju-like creatures that are created by a merging of a team of humans. Some of the people of Denesk join together to become large sea serpents to protect and manage it’s harbour, others make giant kestrels to deliver messages and some are huge badgers to meet the digging needs of construction and well-making. Along with the ending, that feels as eye-opening for me as a reader as it does for our protagonist, I particularly enjoyed what the story is getting at about community. I also loved the very real feeling and layered-with-nuance view the story gives of someone exploring and trying to understand a culture not their own, and how often it is the outsider’s own cultural baggage and assumptions that can cause barriers where none would otherwise exist. Altogether, a great story with a home run use of worldbuilding.

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2020 Short Fiction Round Up 5

Back with a new selection of short stories I’ve read recently and am happy to recommend to others. I think there is a fairly good mix of stories this week, though there are a lot of looking to the future in them, and quite a bit about dealing with childhood and friendships.

“All of Us” by Kathleen Naytia from Speculative City

Here is an interesting, short, alternative history and horror story. In this world the American Civil War did not end in a victory for the North but a stalemate and truce. One where the South’s slaves would be freed…slowly. Very slowly. 100 years later Laura and her family are some of the last slaves to be freed and trying to make their way to The United States of America. There is only one safe reliable transportation for the journey: The Miracle Bus, but Laura and her father have to survive the first part of their trip just to get on the bus and to the relative safety of community.

“To Look Forward” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu from Fantasy Magazine

Here we have a story about friendship and entering the liminal phase of childhood where adults expect you begin not being a child, but a person preparing to become an adult. It is a story about figuring out who you are and how to embrace that. Mariam, Ebuka, and Funke seem to know who they are and who they want to be, whether their parents like it or not. They have confidence in the story of themselves they create and share out on the swings as they look to the future. Our protagonist and narrator isn’t so sure. Not sure of being ready for the future, not sure of who she is, what she wants to do or indeed, if she is even enough to do anything. More comfortable listening to others stories than taking a spotlight to tell her own. Even that story of who she is though, the unsure, unknowing, unready child is perhaps not completely accurate. The story really hits me in the feels and nostalgia. I see so much of my past and even present in the narrator. What a strange thing to be sure of oneself. What a truth that we are often afraid to embrace ourselves even when we know the truth, but won’t admit it. And what a very accurate look at what growing up and trying to deal with the pressures, both internal and external, to know yourself can sometimes feel like.

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Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 9

It’s time for another Fiction Rec Roundup! It’s been on a mini hiatus as I took a step back from social media and other things (locking down my Twitter account with privacy settings and staying off Mastodon) for reasons of stress and focusing on job hunting. It only took two weeks for me to realize the steps I was taking weren’t really reducing my stress, so I’ve returned to business as usual.

This week I have five stories I’d like to share with you. We got aliens, time travel, undead, a lot of love and relationships (not all of which work out), goldfish, and a wonderful (if also difficult and painful at times) tribute to the power of stories and books. Continue reading

Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 4

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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