I
have two pieces of news to share with you today…
First, the anthology I’m in, Timeshift, is now available for preorder on Kindle. It beat its Kickstarter goal, which means all the authors get paid the industry-standard rate for reprints. Yay!
Timeshift features all sorts of speculative short stories related to time — time dilation, time manipulation, time travel (of course), and more. There are some pretty big names in it, so I’m delighted to be included. It releases August 1.
Second, there’s an anthology I’m not in, but got to help judge. I read 178 flash fiction stories on the theme of IMPACT, and rated them according to a rubric (these folks are organized!). Then we held an online meeting and hashed out our favourites. There were a lot of strong contenders. Things got tense. There was blood! (Not really.)
We eventually managed to agree on three winners. It helped that we each got to pick one story that didn’t make it into the top three. Here’s what I said about my Judge’s Pick, “Low Impact” by Tray Ellis:
This story makes me cry every time I read it. It’s straightforward, yet so effective. I’m always astounded when an author manages to use 300 words to span multiple years, making a tiny flash fiction piece into an epic tale. There’s a big relationship story here that’s just hinted at, but the hints are all that’s needed. I also liked that this isn’t an Issue Story: the queer relationship just is, no big deal. (Of course it’s important to tell those stories too, but not to the exclusion of all other queer stories.) And finally, like many of the best science fiction works, this piece filters science through characters to say something thoughtful about the world. Well done.
Impact: Queer Sci Fi’s Fifth Annual Flash Fiction Contest is available on ebook from all the usual suspects, releasing July 25.
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Kobo | iBooks | Angus & Robertson
Siri Paulson's Blog 