Welcome once more to a Short Fiction Roundup of some stories I’ve enjoyed reading in the last week or so and hope you might too. As always if you do enjoy any of these stories yourself I hope you’ll consider giving them and the places that publish them a shout out. It’s a great way to support short fiction. These roundups are pretty simple. I cast about for stories to read and when I find one I like I put it in the roundup. Often though, I look over them when I’m done and realize an inadvertent theme has emerged. This week I’d say if there is such a theme I didn’t plan for but see now I’d say it was endings. I can’t promise every story fits under that broad umbrella, but it does seem like many of these tales talk of coming to the end of a story.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Short Stories
2020 Short Fiction Roundup 2
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.
Continue reading2020 Short Fiction Roundup 1
It was time. Time to try and get back on the blogging horse. Specifically time to get back to rounding up a collection of short speculative fiction I enjoyed and hope you will too. The Short Fiction Rec Roundup. Most stories this week are not of the happy variety. Seems fitting enough with the general mood going on these days. Still, there is some fun here, some cool, some spooky and tragic beauty. Hopefully there is something for you.
“Men in Cars” by Lisa M. Bradley from Anathema Magazine #9
This is the sort of horror story that’s hard to say too much about, because you don’t want to give anything away. I will say it was delightful for me to try and figure out which classic trope it was playing with only to realize at the end that perhaps I had limited the scope of my imagination a little too much. At one point I thought it might make a good Supernatural episode. But later I figured early seasons X-files might be better. CW: Story references sexual abuse and violence.
Continue reading2019 Short Fiction Roundup 2
The second round up of the year! Will these posts become a monthly thing? I hope not. I mean, that’s a good minimum, but I’d certainly like to do better than that! That’s something to worry about next week though. For now I’ve got some stories I really enjoyed to share with you. Most of them are very recent, one is not. Most are fairly long, one is not. Overall I think just about anyone should be able to find one story to enjoy from this selection, hopefully much more than that. I, of course, enjoyed them all.
Continue readingWeekly Fiction Rec Roundup 14
Well, damn. The last two weeks have been pretty busy for me so these story recs are coming out much later than I had planned. Luckily, a good story is a good story and these lists are never intended to only cover stories from the week they’re published anyway. No particular theme cropped up this time, though a majority of the stories involve mothers and daughters in some way, and a lot of them get dark and unsettling. We do have a mix of tones though, and some really interesting things going on in these stories. I hope you check them out and find some things here you enjoy too. Continue reading
Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 13
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.
Now, on with the stories! Continue reading