Category Archives: My Short Stories

Posts about my published short fiction and any works underway.

2022 Writing Wrap-Up

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What did I do in 2022?

In many ways, the past year has been a blur. Kelly and I had a couple of family tragedies and other lesser setbacks, and these often felt huge and all consuming. Interspersed with these challenges was a much more thrilling distraction–a return to the delights of travelling! There was quite a lot of it, as Kelly’s High Times in the Low Parliament was out, so we cautiously attended some cons and writing festivals. Worldcon, Windycon, CanCon, and the Celsius festival in Spain were among the events that welcomed us, and I was so grateful to be able to go, to see my various writing friends again, and to once again reach out to the wider world.

There were virtual cons, too! You can see my panel for Augurcon, “Stories for the Futures we Need,” which also featured Premee Mohamed and Charlie Jane Anders, by clicking on the Youtube link at the bottom of this post. There’s a whole day of programming there to enjoy!

When we weren’t on the road and sometimes even when we were, I was writing. Mostly I worked on novel-length fiction, but I did write a novelette called “Horsewoman,” which will be out in Uncanny soon; I’m very excited about that! My “The Hazmat Sisters, which was a finalist for the 36th Asimovs’ Annual Readers Award will also be featured on Escape Pod, in text and audio forms.

Finally and in a very Gamechanger-y plot twist, my House of Zolo poem, “Starring You in the Role of the Fourth Rider,” is going to be adapted into a presentation–still to be determined–in VR by Black Bag media.

Working on books can make it feel like you have nothing to show for the hours and hours and hours and look, more hours! that one puts in. This is emphatically not me complaining about writing a lot. I loooovvvveee writing. But the publication dates come few and far between, and depending on your process you can work on something for months or even years without putting it in front of someone. It can be odd, and it forces me at least to rely on inner resources when I think about how a project’s going. The time scale for sharing long form fiction can be innately discouraging. I suspect that’s why many new writers struggle to see their work through to completion. It’s a marathon not a sprint: a long way to the finish line!

All of which is to say I’ve probably written half a million words this year, and it may be a fair while yet before you get to read many of them. I do have high hopes of committing more short fiction in 2023–so encourage me, if you dare!

Whatever it takes to get ahead: “The Spear Carrier,” free for the reading @CuriousFictions !

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It’s story time once again! Today I’ve unearthed “The Spear Carrier,” another of my Slow Invasion stories, most of which were bought by Ellen Datlow back when she was at the helm of SciFiction.

“The Spear Carrier” is about Opal, an ambitious young diplomat in service on a planet called Arune, home to a people whom we earth types–behind their backs, anyway–like to call scarecrows. They’re big, they’re spindly, they’re haughty AF, and they love, love, love to duel to the death.

This is a quality that does not endear the scarecrows to humanity’s diplomatic core, but Opal sees it as a bug, not a feature. Nobody else is willing to take a chance on getting skewered, just to get promoted to Ambassador? Perhaps she’s got what it takes…

Here’s a snippet:

Masao touched his throat, and Opal guessed he was remembering the spaceship accident that had, indirectly, brought him here. He’d saved seventeen juvenile Budj from a decompressing passenger compartment on a cruise liner.

After the rescue, he’d been assaulted by a haughty child scarecrow that couldn’t bear the idea of owing her life to a primitive. The Budjmaiden almost strangled him. There were plenty of full-grown Budj who wished she’d succeeded.

Over the course of the story Opal and Masao walk their way through a complicated Arune ritual, and–despite significant differences–they eventually come to an understanding. I’m very fond of this story, and I hope you all enjoy it!

Support my fiction by tipping at Curious!

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I set up at Curious Fictions just after Patreon tried to change its funding model, in a way that adversely affected many of my friends and colleagues. Donor-funded artists benefit from a diverse crowdfunding ecosystem, and I like the way Curious Fictions works. You can read any of my stories for free and, if you wish, set up an account and offer a tip. If you want to be first to hear about my new offerings, you can subscribe–pay as little as a dollar a month, and you’ll get at least a story a month, and my endless thanks.

My previous Curious Fictions offerings include a time travel story, “Three Times over the Falls” and another Slow Invasion story, “Ruby, in the Storm.”

A stolen treasure. An act of revenge. My “A Slow Day at the Gallery,” now @CuriousFictions

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Sunday marked my fiftieth birthday, and I thought I’d celebrate by telling you all about my latest Curious Fictions story, “A Slow Day at the Gallery.” Like “Ruby, in the Storm,” this short story is one of the Slow Invasion series, a collection of snapshots depicting humankind’s effort to join a wider community of spacegoing races. It’s about trade-offs and difficulties involved in being, in each of these relationships, the lesser among very unequal partners.

Colonialism and imperialism are themes I’ve been returning to, lately, in my work. It has been nice to revisit these earlier efforts in that direction.

In “A Slow Day at the Gallery,” an old man travels vast distances to visit his favorite Monet painting, one of the Waterlily Pond series, at the Tsebra art gallery where it now resides. Humanity thought they were lending the painting to the offworlders; there was a disagreement about the exact meaning of ‘loan’, and now things bid fair for the Monet to remain offworld for decades, centuries… or possibly forever.

Here’s a snippet:

Outside the authentic human museum with its authentic humidity-controlled air, he felt himself reviving. They passed into an ornately carved walkway, lined with windows and meant to communicate with the sensitive feet of the Tsebs, a lumpy obstacle course of knobs and gaps. Christopher’s ankles ached as he struggled to traverse it without falling. Just another hurdle, he told himself, like ducking the police or smuggling his false ident out of humanspace. 

The story appeared in Asimov’s SF and was picked up by David Hartwell for his Year’s Best SF series. It was very much inspired by my first trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1997, where I saw my first Monet painting and realized something a print will never tell you–just what all the fuss was about.

Support my fiction by tipping at Curious!

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I set up at Curious Fictions just after Patreon tried to change its funding model, in a way that adversely affected many of my friends and colleagues. Donor-funded artists benefit from a diverse crowdfunding ecosystem, and I like the way Curious Fictions works. You can read any of my stories for free and, if you wish, set up an account and offer a tip. If you want to be first to hear about my new offerings, you can subscribe–pay as little as a dollar a month, and you’ll get at least a story a month, and my endless thanks.

My previous Curious Fictions offerings are a time travel story, “Three Times over the Falls” and another Slow Invasion story, “Ruby, in the Storm.”

Worlds Seen in Passing, including my story “The Cage,” coming from @tordotcom !

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I am pleased to announce that my novelette “The Cage,” the first thing I ever sold to Tor.com, has been chosen for their ten year retrospective collection, Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, edited by the wonderful Irene Gallo, who has been such a key part of making this sight awesome on every possible front.

The book has been announced here; you can find the full story on how the anthology came to be, along with a full contributor’s list and a bigger picture of the cover. It’s available for pre-order now, and contains work by Charlie Jane Anders, Nino Cipri, John Chu, Tina Connolly, Ken Liu, Haralambi Markov, Helen Marshall, Kai Ashante Wilson, Alyssa Wong and so many other wonderful people. You’ll be dazzled, amazed, and delighted by it.

One of the many reasons I tell people–unabashedly and often–that I am delighted to be a Tor author is that this fiction project and the entire Tor.com site is so forward looking. It is a great experiment in figuring out what publishing is in the age of the Internet, and how it can work. The Tor.com team takes risks, works hard, and experiments. The wild success of their novella program (from which you can pre-order Kelly’s thoroughly wonderful  Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach) and Tor Labs shows they aren’t resting on their laurels. It takes guts, perseverance, and vision to bring all of this wonderful creative product together, and I cannot express how much I admire everyone at Team Tor for their innovative spirit and dedication to the cause.

Imperialism from Afar: “Ruby, in the Storm,” @CuriousFictions

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My second Curious Fictions offering is another piece that the marvelous Ellen Datlow bought for SciFiction, back in the day. It’s called “Ruby, in the Storm,” and it’s one of a bunch of stories I sometimes call the Slow Invasion series. It takes place in a near-future Alberta, in the midst of a sometimes-violent global conversation about offworld immigration, alien students at the University of Calgary and just what it is that aliens are hoping to achieve by enrolling in Canadian universities.

Ruby was a featured story at CF, and here’s what the lovely folks there said about it.

A.M. Dellamonica deftly sketches a world where humans and recently-transplanted aliens rub shoulders in near-future Calgary. As tensions rise, themes of belonging, trust, and chosen societies come to the fore… be warned, afterward you may also want a pet Purvaran stormcloud. Rated R for some sexual content.

When I wrote this story, around about 2004, I had been living in Vancouver for over ten years. Writing about blizzards in Southern Alberta made me remember the beauty of winter on the prairies.

I had mostly hated freezing my ass off for months at a stretch, every year, and spent my youth vowing to move to somewhere bleepity bleeping warm. But after a decade on the Coast I was able to step back and remember that there were things I liked about snow. It was a jolt. It was also part of an emotional journey that made it possible for me to contemplate moving here to Toronto, where I am deliriously happen… even though it does actually snow on occasion.

This is one of the lesser-discussed things that writing can give its practitioners: unexpected views into our own sea changes.  People cannot help but see themselves in a distorted fashion, and even conscious self-reflection comes with a Hall of Mirrors effect. But when I was writing “Ruby, In the Storm,” I remember vividly how I caught myself trying to capture, in words, a particular winter thing: globs of clustered snowflakes falling slowly through amber streetlights, piling the fluff high in air just warm enough to keep it frozen, deadening the sound all around. I remember that, and the shock as I remembered and felt, of all things, love and longing.

The story’s not really about snow, of course–it’s about isms. Racism, imperialism, collaboration… ism. But in case there’s anyone out there, right now, writing and wondering Why am I doing This?, I thought I’d cast a little light on this side-perk of the creative process.

Support my fiction by tipping at Curious!

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I set up at Curious Fictions just after Patreon tried to change its funding model, in a way that adversely affected many of my friends and colleagues. Donor-funded artists benefit from a diverse crowdfunding ecosystem, and I like the way Curious Fictions works. You can read any of my stories for free and, if you wish, set up an account and offer a tip. If you want to be first to hear about my new offerings, you can subscribe–pay as little as a dollar a month, and you’ll get at least a story a month, and my endless thanks.

My previous Curious Fictions offering is a time travel story, “Three Times over the Falls.”