My fantasy short story “Non-Zero Probabilities” is up in this month’s Clarkesworld Magazine.

I’ve been tempted to call this my “Urban Fantasy Triptych”, together with “The You Train” and “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, In The City Beneath the Still Waters” (forthcoming from Postscripts), since the first two are based on my life here in New York and the latter is based on some years that I spent in New Orleans. But I’m not actually sure I’m going to stop at three stories. In fact, I kind of feel like there’s at least one more New York story brewing in me — probably several, given my longtime love affair with this city. We’ll have to see how or if they come out.

Curiously, I’ve never felt any urge to write stories about the other cities I’ve lived in — Washington DC, Boston, Mobile AL. This may be because I never quite felt at home in those places. But oddly, I’ve written a story about Milan, which I visited for only two days, and I’ve felt the urge to write a story about Montreal, where I spent less than a week. Some cities just resonate, I guess.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

In the mornings, Adele girds herself for the trip to work as a warrior for battle. First she prays, both to the Christian god of her Irish ancestors and to the orishas of her African ancestors — the latter she is less familiar with, but getting to know. Then she takes a bath with herbs, including dried chickory and allspice, from a mixture given to her by the woman at the local botanica. (She doesn’t know Spanish well, but she’s getting to know that too. Today’s word is suerte.) Then, smelling vaguely of coffee and pumpkin pie, she layers on armor: the Saint Christopher medal her mother sent her, for protection on journeys. The hair-clasp she was wearing when she broke up with Larry, which she regards as the best decision of her life. On especially dangerous days, she wears the panties in which she experienced her first self-induced orgasm post-Larry. They’re a bit ragged after too many commercial laundromat washings, but still more or less sound. (She washes them by hand now, with Woollite, and lays them flat to dry.)

Go read.

Also, many thanks to Paul for the title! I suck at titles.

My story, “The Spaces Between Things,” which is in the current issue (17/18) of Electric Velocipede, is up for viewing online.

“David was in love with his aunt Masha. In the months after his father died, she came over for dinner often. While she ate, he’d watch her chest rise and fall, and for long, uncountable minutes he’d stare at the soft, pink skin of her arms, wanting to run his fingers along her smoothness and squeeze her until he fell asleep. He’d stuff forkfuls of mashed potatoes into his mouth and listen to his mother and aunt talk freely and harshly about people David barely knew. He’d study Masha’s green-within-green eyes, the chocolate folds of her hair, the funny way in which her nose curved just a little bit at the tip, as if God himself had laid a tiny imperfection upon her just to remind the world that she wasn’t an angel. But what most captured David’s attention, what his eyes wandered to as they’d finish dinner and move to the couch for coffee and cake, was the thick, brown leather belt that hugged her waist.

He knew the feelings in his body were the beginnings of manhood. But he was told that boys were supposed to like breasts and lips, butts and legs. And he did like those things—yet he couldn’t help but cross his legs when he saw her stomach bend under the thick leather strap, and nightly he dreamed of her smothering him as the heavy brass buckle pressed painfully into his groin. He pretended to listen to his mother and aunt, learning to nod his head when they looked his way, until he became skilled at predicting the paths of their eyes, at avoiding their gazes. And when the spell of conversation held the women in its thrall, when his mother’s words grew slow and stupid with wine, David stared deeply into the folds of Masha’s belt, studying the images stamped in its sides. He saw flowery jungles with fruit-bearing trees, a dozen birds hanging from limb and sky, and tufts of wavy, leafy vines that tangled throughout. Often, as the women talked, he imagined himself floating inside her belt, unable to escape its secret pull, forced forever to wander under its hot sun and glimpse out at all the world from the two-dimensional confines of her waist.

It was warm and safe there.

And so when his mother said, “Grandpa’s not doing very well. I need you to stay with your Aunt Masha for two weeks,” David nodded his affirmation as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. That year was 2056.”

To continue reading this story, click here.

Also, fellow Altered Fluid member K. Tempest Bradford’s “Enmity” is also available for viewing.

I recently received word that my story, “Pumpkinhead”, was accepted for the Shadows of the Emerald City anthology, a collection of horror stories set in L. Frank Baum’s Oz. I had a lot of fun writing this story and I’m looking forward to seeing the final product later this year.

More details to follow later.

I’m considering getting T-shirts printed celebrating the fact that “I’m #25!”  I’m serious. My little Abyss & Apex story, “Snatch Me Another,” continues to chug along, finishing at #25 on Locus’s Year-End Recommended List for 2008.  The # 25 spot is quite an honor considering the total number of genre stories published in 2008 and the formidable cast of all-star writers that occupy the top 24 spots.  So thanks everyone for the support!  It’s much appreciated.

“Snatch Me Another” also made the StorySouth Million Writers List of Notable Stories for 2008 and recently received an honorable mention in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best SF Annual Collection 26th Edition (along with my two Interzone stories “The Scent of Their Arrival” and “The Fifth Zhi”).  It will be  appearing in Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci Fi and Fantasy, Download 2008, edited by Rich Horton (Wyrm Publishing), which is available for pre-order at amazon.com.  

I’m #25!  Yee-hah!  Now where can I get those T-shirts made …?

I finally managed to see The Toxic Avenger Musical on the Fourth of July for the bargain promotional price of $17.76. I thought it was a lot of fun, whether you’ve seen the Troma films or not. I think you’ll probably like it if you enjoyed The Evil Dead: The Musical. If you’re curious about the show, check out my review over at Tor.com.

I recently received my contributor copy of the Hatter Bones anthology, edited by Paul Jessup. Chock full of creepy, cutting edge fiction, I devoured the book in two days.

Paul Jessup asked, in his guidelines, for “contemporary, strange, broken things” and “stories made from bird bones, broken bits, cobbled together out of things spoken in the rain.” What resulted from that prompt was my short story, “The Girl in the Basement,” told in brief vignettes about a girl who spends her life locked in a basement by her parents. It is one of my favorites, and I’m glad it has seen print in such a fine publication.

And what a great Table of Contents to be on too! I’m alongside such talents as Matt Cheney, Darin C. Bradley, Ekaterina Sedia, Cat Rambo, Jason Sizemore, Lavie Tidhar, Forrest Aguirre, Becca De La Rosa, and lots more. Many of the stories are dark, unforgettable things that punch you in the gut without remorse. Some are science fiction, some are horror, some are fantasy, and many are in that interstitial place where a lot of excellent new fiction is taking place.

And I’d be remiss to not mention the artwork. Artist Jesse Lindsay does a fabulous job illustrating each story. (Click on Hatter Bones and then “The Girl in the Basement” to see the artwork for my story).

So check out Hatter Bones from ENE press and let me know what you think!

Altered Fluid appeared this Saturday on Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf radio program and Rajan Khanna read a new story live on the air which we subsequently critiqued.  For those interested, you can listen to a recording of the show here.  And you can see some photos from the show here.

Altered Fluid will be appearing this Saturday on Jim Freund’s radio show “Hour of the Wolf.”  We will be critiquing a story by Rajan Khanna live on the air.  The program airs from 5-7am on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NY Metro area, or can be heard live and after the show anywhere in the world at http://stream.wbai.org.  Here’s a link to the Facebook Event.  You can read about our previous on-air hijinks here.

Addendum: Jim Freund says: “While the show can be heard live at stream.wbai.org, afterwards people should go to the Facebook Hour of the Wolf group or to the hourwolf.com Web site, where it will reside for about 6 months.”

I’ve been administering the Write-a-thon FaceBook page for the past few days (go and become a fan!) and my goal has mainly been to post links to all the participants there at regular intervals so that folks can get a chance to see a bit about each writer. This has lead to some awesomeness and hilarity.

Kate gave everyone a set of areas to fill in — excerpt, bio, describe your writing, describe your goals — and the things people sent in for the writing description and goals reveals some really cool stuff. I think my description is a bit boring, especially compared to “zombies woo small-town housewives and magical porn teaches life lessons” or “the story of a priest who becomes a vampire in Klondike gold rush era Seattle” or “small stories about queer characters in near-future SF settings or in contemporary settings with supernatural elements, but occasionally break out with actiony romps and chicklit space opera.”

I want to read all of that!

If someone asked you to describe your writing, what would you say? Or even to describe your novel or latest short story. Not the plot, necessary, but to describe what it’s like.

(oh, P. S., several Altered Fluid members are participating in this write-a-thon. Check out the complete list of participants here and sponsor one of us!)

My very brief (< 140 characters) prose poem is now up at Jetse de Vries’ Outshine Twitter ‘zine.  Go read it. It’s very short.