New story up today at Daily Science Fiction!

“Love in a Chinese Room”

I hope you enjoy it.

Happy Holidays!

I am super happy to announce that my story “Fairy Tale Ending” will be appearing in Belladonna Publishing’s forthcoming anthology STRANGE LITTLE GIRLS. (Full TOC can be found here.)

I’m told the story may also be translated into Swedish and Norwegian, which would be awesome. To my knowledge, my work has never been translated.

I’m just about to return the contract for my story “Love in a Chinese Room,” which will be appearing in Daily Science Fiction.

This was my favorite kind of sale: the story sold on its first submission.

Was fun to write too, but I’ll save my commentary on that for the story notes DSF will publish with the story.

When it’s available to read, I’ll link to it here, or you can subscribe at Daily Science Fiction’s website and have it delivered by email (along with many other wonderful stories by other authors.)

— feeling excited!

UPDATE: My critique has been spoken for. Don’t let that stop you from supporting the kickstarter, though. Critiques by many other excellent DSF writers are still available!

Daily Science Fiction is running a Kickstarter campaign!

Kickstarter rewards include short story critiques by Daily Science Fiction authors. Including me!

Why would you want a critique from me?

Stories I’ve critiqued for other writers have gone on to sell to many reputable markets and have even been short-listed for awards and… Well, truthfully, that probably has little to do with my critiques and a lot to do with my good fortune at knowing many talented, hard-working writers. There are no guarantees my critique will get you published. Even so, I’m told my feedback is very helpful!

Plus, you’ll benefit from my experience as a slush reader. In the past three years I’ve read about four thousand short stories in the Clarkesworld Magazine slush pile. I can’t promise my critique will get you out of slush and into print, but hopefully it’ll point you in the right direction.

Let me help you and support an excellent venue for short fiction.

“Two Men in a Bedchamber, As Observed by the Ghost of the Girl in the Oval Portrait” is now available for purchase!

This is a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” from, as the title suggests, the point of view of the girl in the portrait. I had a lot of fun writing it and am really pleased to share space in the anthology with so many other wonderful writers.

I also owe special thanks to the editor, Steve Berman, who worked with me through several rounds of edits, some quite extensive. My story is vastly improved by his contributions.

Today, my story “Chasing Unicorns” is available to read on Daily Science Fiction’s web site.

In related news, and directly thanks to Daily Science Fiction choosing to publish this story, I have had some very interesting developments in my professional life, with regards to my novels and the progression of my career as a writer. I’m not ready to say much more than that at this time, but I will say: This has been a very interesting week, so far.

Exiting times! Wish me luck in the weeks ahead.

My short story “A Midnight Carnival at Sunset” is now live at Unidentified Funny Objects. Enjoy!

About a million years ago—last June—Eric James Stone tagged me in the Lucky 7 Challenge. At the time, I was swamped, and though I’d intended to post and pass it on, I forgot. It’s going around again now. (Seasonal like a flu?) Anyway, I saw someone post their seven lines and remembered that I’d already been tagged.

The rules are:

Go to page 7 or 77 of your latest work. Read down to the seventh line and then post online the next seven lines or sentences. Then head off and tag seven more writers.

So, the following are the seven lines following the seventh line on the seventh page of “Forgotten Sonnets from the City of Undoing,” a short story I’m currently working on.

Violetta introduced us to the funeral director, easily picked out from the mourners because he wore a nametag and occasionally rearranged the flowers when people brought more. Violetta told him we were out-of-towners, just going to spend one night. Could he recommend a hotel, a hostel, or anyone who might put up two kids in their spare room? We were only passing through on our way to mumblety-mumble, but what on earth— Who was the boy and what had happened to him?

“He was called Sergio,” the funeral director said. “I don’t know what killed him. I’ve forgotten. It’s terrible. It must be terrible. Everyone has forgotten.”

I tag: Beth Dawkins, Allison Starkweather (Alli, your website is down!), Gary Henderson, Katherine Mankiller, Julie Hannah, Sandy Parsons, and Christopher Kastensmidt. If you don’t want to play, or if you’ve already been tagged and don’t want to play again, feel free to ignore. If you haven’t been tagged and do want to play, feel free to tag yourself in the comments and join in.

I learned of this a few weeks ago, and what with the holidays and all, I forgot to mention here when it was announced by the publisher: Good news! My story “Arrhythmia,” published in December 2011 in Penumbra, was among the stories chosen for Penumbra‘s first annual Best of… anthology.

This is where I’m going to stop, rather than go on to explain about how this is among my favorite stories I’ve written. (It is, actually, but I’m trying to learn to resist the urge to say that, because somehow I find I want to say that about all my stories. Because they are all my favorites. Hah!) Anyway, I’ll post here again when the anthology is released, though at the moment I have no idea when that might be.