When I sat down to write this, I thought I'd only published four short stories this year, but then I remembered that there are two originals in my collection, and also that an older story of mine was published in the first issue of THE DARK.
In total, I published seven original stories this year. It's not so bad for a year in which I've been primarily noveling, although I wish I had finished a few more that are in the late stages of revision.
Many of the stories are available online, but if you'd like to access one of the ones that isn't for awards consideration, contact me and I'll send you a copy.
The story of mine that seems to be getting the best reaction this year is:
"If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love," at Apex Magazine. It's a short-short with a poetic rhythm.
The one that's probably my favorite is:
"All That Fairy Tale Crap" which first appeared in GLITTER & MAYHEM, but was reprinted in Apex Magazine this December. (It's still original to this year.) It's a meta-fictional take on Cinderella with some rated R content.
I also published three other original stories in magazines and anthologies:
"Beyond the Naked Eye" appeared in John Joseph Adams and Doug Cohen's OZ REIMAGINED. It's not available for free online, but it is available as a Kindle single for 1.99. The prompt for this anthology was to reimagine Oz as a different genre; I wrote about Oz as a reality show, but the character of the narrator–a jeweler–took over the story as I was writing.
"Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings" appeared in Apex Magazine. It's got a trigger warning on it for sexual (and other) violence. I wrote it on a dare because there's a particular kind of story that appears a lot in horror slush, where writers seem to be working out autobiographical fantasies of killing their wives or ex-wives. I wanted to see if I could follow all of the "rules" of the genre while creating a narrative that carried an opposite message.
"What Lies at the Edge of a Petal Is Love" is a heavily imagistic story that appeared in the first issue of The Dark.
Two original stories appeared in my collection, HOW THE WORLD BECAME QUIET, which came out this year from Subterranean Press.
"Speech Strata" is another heavily imagistic story about a far-far future that's largely indistinguishable from fantasy.
"With Singleness of Heart" is the other story on this list that has a trigger warning for sexual (and other) violence. It's very short, and deals with the topics of rape as a weapon of war, and the abuse of soldiers.
