Stories Sold/Published
"Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"--Kelvin Throop III
NOTE: If you have a question on content (e.g. "Does this story have graphic violence?"), please feel free to email me and I will do my best to answer. Otherwise, please consider my default (beyond whatever notes are provided) "decline to warn." (Obviously, other people are welcome to say what they want!)
Also, notes on my other works (essays and poetry) have their own page.
The Book of Locked Doors
The book was bound in pale, crinkled leather and rough thread the color of massacres, and Suzuen Vayag carried it in an inner pocket of her coat as a matter of course. Her sister Kereyag had written it in gunfire and witchfire and hellpyre smoke, on the stray cold morning of her death. The least Vayag could do was keep it safe.
Science fantasy. Thanks to my sister for the beta. Forthcoming from Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel
Among the universe's civilizations, some conceive of the journey between stars as the sailing of bright ships, and others as tunneling through the crevices of night. Some look upon their far-voyaging as a migratory imperative, and name their vessels after birds or butterflies.
Sf. For Sam Kabo Ashwell. Thanks to my betas: Daedala, Yune Kyung Lee, comrade_cat, and Marissa Lingen. Published in Tor.com Aug. 10, 2011.
Conservation of Shadows
There is no such thing as conservation of shadows. When light destroys shadows, darkness does not gain in density elsewhere. When shadows steal over earth and across the sky, darkness is not diluted.
Science fantasy. For Sonya Taaffe. Published in Clarkesworld Aug. 2011. Reprint forthcoming in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2012.
Ghostweight
It is not true that the dead cannot be folded.
Fantasy in space: origami, ghosts, and atrocities. For Charibdys. Thanks to my betas: Rachel Brown, Yune Kyung Lee, and Daedala. Clarkesworld January 2011; there is also a podcast version read by Kate Baker. Reprints forthcoming in The Year's Best Science Fiction 29, ed. Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2012, ed. Rich Horton.
The Territorialist
Jeris was feeding the gargoyles when the bone-map rattled. "Captain," one of the guards said, "I think you ought to see this."
Action fantasy, also known as the Manly Prose Experiment. (I'll explain someday.) In a city named Spine, where magic is dangerously modular, the guards have to put down a rogue territory. Thanks to Sam Kabo Ashwell and the BRAWLers. Published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #47.
Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain
The usual fallacy is that, in every universe, many futures splay outward from any given moment. But in some universes, determinism runs backwards: given a universe's state s at some time t, there are multiple previous states that may have resulted in s. In some universes, all possible pasts funnel toward a single fixed ending, Ω.
A story about fate, an inexplicably deadly gun, and a glass of water two degrees away from freezing. This is what happens when I am thinking about guns and Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves at the same time. Thanks to Rachel Brown, my sister, Geoff Cohen, Iain, and Joseph Betzwieser. Published in Lightspeed Sept. 2010 (Issue 4; podcast version available). Reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction 28, ed. Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011, ed. Rich Horton.
The Winged City
When General Minkhir returned through the Winged City's gates, her clay servant Chukash saw the emblem of conquest in her hand. This time it was a bronze crescent, drenched in blood as always. Chukash fell in beside her, holding a basin to catch the blood. The trees to either side of them straightened, the gray-brown limbs flushing to a green-tinged hue, but the street was as dry as it had been before the general's departure weeks earlier. It was an inauspicious sign when the city's need for water was still dire.
Epic fantasy in a parched city from the viewpoint of a man of clay with a handprint within him, among other mysteries. Setting loosely inspired by Mesopotamian mythology. Thanks to Aliette de Bodard, Kiz, Mrissa, and the Brawlers. Appeared in Giganotosaurus, Dec. 2010.
Braided
There lived a man in the tower and he had no eyes. The birds of the sky came to him and he knew them by the beats of their wings. The sun in the sky traveled its white road and he knew it by the heat of its breath.
Fantasy with nods toward Mesopotamian mythology. Thanks to Margaret Ronald, Jacqueline A. Lott, Oyce, Elizabeth Burdick, and others for their encouragement. Forthcoming from Papaveria Press.
Between Two Dragons
Yen, you have to come back so I can tell you the beginning of your story. Everything is classified: every soldier unaccounted for, every starsail deployed far from home, every gram of shrapnel...every word that might have passed between us. Word of the last battles will come tomorrow, say the official news services; but we have heard the same thing for the last fistful of days. And what is tomorrow, after all, but a morning after darkness?
Military sf, despite title: Imjin War in space (very loosely speaking). War between two nations, Cho and Yamat; one of the few soldiers with the capability to rally Cho's forces may already have been damaged beyond repair. Dedication: Prof. Barry S. Strauss and my parents. Published in Clarkesworld Magazine #43, April 2010.
Swanwatch
Officially, the five exiles on the station were the Initiates of the Fermata. Unofficially, the Concert of Worlds called them the swanwatch.
Sf about suicide art and music. Thanks to Sam Kabo Ashwell, Keilexandra, Yune Kyung Lee, and Helen Keeble. Published in Federations, ed. John Joseph Adams.
Dragon Logic
Fantasy. Published in Japanese Dreams, ed. Sean Wallace. Thanks to the BASFW and others.
Architectural Constants
The citizens of the silklands and the soldiers of the webroad and the singers of the tunnels have no name for the city. There are other cities upon the world's restless wheel. There are others more celebrated, whether for the rooted topiary birds that line their boulevards, or their sparkling, improbable hyperbola fountains, or the tame inky warding poems that patrol their walls. There are others with taller spires to focus the unlight of the phantom moon, or deeper dungeons with which to contain the abysses of desire.
Fantasy. A librarian, a sentinel, and a silhouette on a collision course with the deadly forces that rule the one city, the axis mundi. Thanks to the BASFW and Oyce. Published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
The Bones of Giants
Whatever else might be said of the sorcerer who ruled the rim of the Pit, he had never been able to animate the bones of giants. The bones lay scattered in the rimlands, green-grey with moss and crusted with crystals, whorled with the fingerprints of desperate travelers. The bones did not easily surrender fingerprints. The locals considered it bad luck to leave their marks on the giants' bones.
A suicidal young man and a mysterious necromancer try to take down the sorcerer-king who has, they say, subjugated the realm of death. Thanks to Sonya Taaffe, Marissa Lingen, Coniraya, Keilexandra, Sam Ashwell, Yune Kyung Lee, and Rachel Brown. Dedicated to Rachel Brown. Published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Aug./Sept. 2009.
Blue Ink
It's harder than you thought, walking from the battle at the end of time and down a street that reeks of entropy and fire and spilled lives. Your eyes aren't dry. Neither is the alien sky. Your shoulders ache and your stomach hurts. Blue woman, blue woman, the chant runs through your head as you limp toward a portal's bright mouth. You're leaving, but you intend to return. You have allies yet.
Sf/slipstream: what to do when the end of the world comes for you. Thanks to Keilexandra, Moira, and Oyce. Published in Clarkesworld Magazine.
The Unstrung Zither
"They don't look very dangerous," Xiao Ling Yun said to the aide. Ling Yun wished she understood what Phoenix Command wanted from her. Not that she minded the excuse to take a break from the composition for two flutes and hammered dulcimer that had been stymying her for the past two weeks.
Through a one-way window in the observation chamber, Xiao Ling Yun saw five adolescents sitting cross-legged on the floor in a semicircle. Before them was a tablet and two brushes. No ink; these were not calligraphy brushes. One of the adolescents, a girl with short, dark hair, leaned over and drew two characters with quick strokes. All five studied the map that appeared on the tablet.
Science fantasy: five teenage mechanical dragon pilots with a secret, an incendiary glider corps serving an imperialist agenda, and applied musical aesthetics. Thanks to Sonya Taaffe, Alex Kay, Oyce, Keilexandra, Andrew Plotkin, Marissa Lingen, Helen Keeble, Rachel Brown, and Rilina. This one's for Oyce. Published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar. 2009. Reprinted in Year's Best SF 15, ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer.
The Fourth Horseman
They'd left the horses behind. This was not, so much as any of them had noticed, a loss. They carried the brimstone hooves and smoke-dream manes with them.
Eschatological slipstream fantasy: it's the end of the world, except the fourth horseman has gone missing, and the convergence of apocalypses is suspended. Thanks to Mrissa, SeraC, Rilina, Helen Keeble, Elizabeth Shack, Charles M., Jeff Jones, Dan Goodman, and Greg Clinton. Published in Electric Velocipede #17/18.
Notes on the Necromantic Symphony
Few reliable records have survived of the premiere of Mrod Zogorith's last and greatest work, the Symphony No. 36 in Mode 9. Zogorith herself vanished after the performance, and morbid rumors in its wake caused the wags to dub it the Necromantic Symphony. It is likelier that Zogorith fled the region during the subsequent Siege of Taruon, or was killed.
Fantasy. Not quite a story, but trust me, my school orchestra experiences never went like this. Thanks to Mrissa, my sister, Stacy C., Charles, JDR, and Melymbrosia. Appeared in Farrago's Wainscot Part IV: Fall. Review [The Fix].
The Inferno
Jenna Freeman was beginning to think that she should have listened to her sister before she bought the new viola. It wasn't that she was superstitious. But the instrument had survived two firesÑit still had scarring on its ribsÑand the last owner had nicknamed it the Inferno. Jenna's sister had said, "Don't you think that's a bad omen? It'll inspire a new category of viola jokes." Only half-listening, Jenna had played a transposed fragment of a Bach partita and was entranced by the Inferno's tone. It sounded like dark chocolate and red satin ribbons and all things shadowy, exactly the way a viola should be. After that, there was no way not to buy the Inferno.
A viola story! Thanks to Yune. Appeared in Behind the Wainscot: The Five Senses.
The Shadow Postulates
Kaela Navus was reading a beginners' sword-dancing manual when a hand descended upon her own, blotting out the diagram. She looked up, mouth opening in protest, only to have the scroll plucked from her grip and rolled shut. The black lines faded into ricepaper-white. "Teris!" Kaela said.
Her roomsister, Teris Tascha, set the scroll down on the escritoire out of Kaela's reach. "You won't learn the pattern for the Swallow Flies Home from a diagram," she said. "It has to live in your muscles."
A science fantasy (more fantasy with quasi-mathematical underpinnings) set in the distant future of Paper Knives, although this possibility is irrelevant to the story itself. (There are historical references. Inaccurate ones, given the elapsed time.) If you must know, it was spurred by nostalgia about the magic of even undergraduate-level theorem-izing, and the thought that mathematics can be a personal endeavor indeed. Thanks to Yune, Rilina, Chymera, Wendy S., Charles M., Mrissa, and S.G. Dedication: for Alex Winbow, with apologies to Fermat and Euclid's Fifth. Originally published in Helix #5, Summer 2007. Now available here for your perusal.
Review of the issue by James Killus [Unintentional Irony].
Screamers
"Pigeon or canary?"
Cadet Serren Psora halted before the entrance to the briefing room and blinked up at the gaunt. She hadn't realized how many bones you could see in such a translucent face. "Sir?" she said.
The gaunt's upper lip curled away from his silvery teeth. No, not silvery; more a shimmer, as though he weren't all there. Which, of course, he wasn't. "Too polite to act bright, is that it?" he asked.
Sf. Formerly called "Pigeons," which was a lousy title. Thanks to Viable Paradise VIII's writing exercises, Teresa Nielsen Hayden ("find your inner editor and mug her"), Kate Salter, Jax, April, my sister, Rilina, Elizabeth Bear, Mer, Mrissa, Charles M., Margaret Ronald, Scott Andrews, and Julie Pascal. Appeared in Ideomancer vol. 6, issue 2.
Behind the Mirror
Her sister did not live behind the mirror.
Fantasy/slipstream flash. Chiaroscuro entanglements. Thanks to Peter Berman, Jeff Jones, Jacqueline A. Lott, and Sam Kabo Ashwell. For Rachel M. Published in Coyote Wild Winter 2006.
Unstringing the Bow
There are secret places in the world, and our maze was one of them. Sometimes a queen or an astrologer or a poet will follow some inward silence and find our maze; sometimes a king or architect or musician will follow some outward cacophony and seek our maze, and we must hide ourselves.
Fantasy with a Borgesian flavor, concerning scholars studying strange echoes, linguistics inverses, and an illiterate woman with a purpose of her own. Thanks to Peter Berman, Helen Keeble, Mrissa, Timprov, Stacy, my sister, Margaret Ronald, Andrew Willett, Bill Kohler, Teresa Nielsen Hayden (Evil Overlord exercises!--except I used Murphy's Laws of Combat instead), and Angela. Dedicated to Mrissa and Myn. Appeared in Ideomancer vol. 5, issue 2.
Nine Tails, Hundred Hearts
Yeng knew many things about foxes. He knew the russet of their fur and the soft marks their feet left in rotting leaves. He knew the stink of their urine and the feral amber of their eyes. He knew that the gumiho, the nine-tailed foxes, ate livers or hearts, or sometimes both, when they sought to become human.
Fantasy, loosely based on Korean/Chinese folklore. An inverse-of-sorts to "Eating Hearts." Thanks to Beth Bernobich, Mrissa, Oyceter, Elizabeth Bear, Charles M., Lisa Mia Moore, Rilina, Scott Andrews, Danny Adams, Greg London, and SeraC. Fantasy Magazine #2 from Prime Books.
Review in Tangent Online. Brief review [Emerald City].
So That Her High-Born Kinsmen Came
Listen. This is how it is in hell, how your mothers and grandmothers have told it, how your fathers and grandfathers have tallied it. Listen. This is how the tides of hell will number and outnumber you, and how you must drink the dregs of that sea.
Fantasy of a darker sort. Guess which poet inspired this. Motherhood, changeling, sin's day, hell. I blame Poe, Joe, and MarbleX (indirectly). Thanks to my sister, Myn, Mrissa, and G.G. 2nd person again. Forthcoming in Sybil's Garage #3.
Brief review in Emerald City (it's faster to do a search on the title).
Hopscotch
You're far from the homestar, on the run from the big guns. You think of the places burned behind you: forked glassy structures with their petal-sails spread toward the more assertive of twin stars, the girl-woman with the peony eyes you left after a single bowered night, the weapons (guns, guns, guns) with your name inscribed on them in sixteen languages. Your faces.
Sf slipstream. Maybe. An interstellar quest for home, a battle, star-crossed lesbian lovers. Forthcoming in the anthology Twenty Epics. Thanks to my sister, Mrissa, Rilina, J.H., Margaret Ronald, Charles M., and Greg London.
Review at Tangent Online. Review at Strange Horizons. Review [Eve's Alexandria].
Words Written in Fire
Fires lived more brightly around her. She first noticed it when she lit a match and held it until her thumb blistered and charred. Even then, she sensed that a match shouldn't last that long, flickering blue and white as she inhaled the faint smoke. Her thumb healed overnight, too.
Fantasy. An orphan attracted to fire. Thanks to Rilina and my sister. Appeared in Shadows of Saturn Aug./Sept. 2005. (The magazine is now defunct.)
The Sun's Kiss
The queen in her dark halls kept a mirror of ice that had never known the sun's kiss. Within it was frozen a maiden with paler lips, sweeter eyes. A man appeared in the mirror's cold depths. The queen breathed over its surface, erasing his reflection, and turned. Waited.
Fantasy. Reflections, ratios, and the price of sunlight. You may be better off reading Rilke. For Cofax. Thanks to Mrissa, Lauren McDonald, Geoff Alex Cohen, Margaret Ronald, Greg London, Charles M., Rilina, SeraC, Stacy C., and Scott Andrews. Appeared in Ideomancer vol. 4, issue 3, September 2005.
Moon, Paper, Scissors
White shapes fell from Mei's hands: here a narrow triangle, there a half-ripped crescent. A shadow cut across the pile of scraps on the floor. Mei stopped, her scissors gaping wide and bright. She kept looking at the blades.
Fantasy flash. A melancholy paper-doll story. Thanks to my sister, Beth Bernobich, Paul Huwe, Mrissa, Charles M., and Jacqueline A. Lott. Appeared in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet no. 16. Review [Tangent Online].
The Third Song
It was midway in the morning of the world, in the great middle desert, and a woman knelt beneath a tree beneath the wide, wondering sky. Her eyes were wet, her throat was dry, her feet as rough as the sand.
Fantasy. More poem than prose: a brief creation-myth involving a woman, her hunger and thirst, and a crow. Thanks to my sister and Kim. Appeared in Lenox Avenue Jan./Feb. 2005. (The magazine is now defunct.)
Eating Hearts
"It's about not seeing," Chuan explained to her just after he brought the meal to the table. "The perfect magician is all-blind, all-unknowing. No sound reaches a wall to wake an echo; no touch bridges distance." He leaned back against the wall where, Horanga imagined, the cloth of his shirt hung over the hollow curve of his back. He lived in a house in the city, by the river, and long ago the sound of fish swimming endlessly in that river would have distracted her from her purpose.
Fantasy. This is loosely based on Korean folklore/legend (those who speak Korean or know a particular foundation myth will find one of the names a dead give-away). Despite the title, it's not gruesome. Thanks to Rilina, Jacqueline A. Lott, and my sister. Dedication: to the tigers in my family. F&SF June 2005, also reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy #6, ed. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer and Best New Fantasy, ed. Sean Wallace. And finally, reprinted in Korean translation in Fantastique 2007 vol. 1.
Paul Kincaid's review of Year's Best Fantasy #6 at SF Site. Brief review [Ideomancer]. Brief review [Russ Allbery]. A review of the F&SF issue [Tangent Online].
The Black Abacus
A science fiction story published in F&SF June 2002. A quantum war and two lovers with vastly different ways of dealing with ethical questions. (I swear this is the last time for the forseeable future that I write sf with a final exam in it. My stories must scream, "Student!") Dedicated to JCB.
This also appeared in an anthology, SF: The Best of 2002, ed. Robert Silverberg & Karen Haber. Here's a SF Site review of the anthology.
A brief mention in SF Site's review of the issue and another review at Daniel E. Blackston's Firebrand Fiction Reviews.
(My sister hypothesizes that this one set up the highest expectations with its opening, and therefore disappointed more. She may have something there.)
In space there are no seasons, and this is true too of the silver wheels that are humanity's homes beyond Earth and the silver ships that carried us there. In autumn there are no fallen leaves and in spring, no living flowers; no winter winds, no summer snow. There are no days except our own calendars and the stars' slow candles in the dark.
The Network has known only one war, and that war ended before it began.
This is why, of course, the Network's ships trapped in q-space--that otherwhere of superpositions and spindrift possibilities--wield waveform interrupters, and why, though I was Rachel's friend, I killed her across several timelines. But the tale begins with our final exam, not my murders.
Counting the Shapes
A fantasy novelette published in F&SF June 2001. Dedicated to Ch'mera and those who teach math (you know who you are). There are references in one of the magic systems to topology, fractal symmetry and Cantorian set theory, but they're not necessary to figure out the story.
This also appeared in In Lands That Never Were, a F&SF reprint anthology ed. Gordon Van Gelder, in Fall 2004.
How many shapes of pain are there? Are any topologically related? And is one of them death?
Biantha woke to a heavy knocking on the door and found her face pressed against a book's musty pages. She sat up and brushed her pale hair out of her face, trying to discern a pattern to the knocking and finding that the simplest one was impatience. Then she got to her feet and opened the door, since her warding spell had given her no warning of an unfriendly presence outside. Besides, it would be a little longer before the demons reached Evergard.
Alas, Lirette
Sf: space adventure, published in F&SF Jan. 2001. Dedicated to Paul U. James Dunnigan's nonfiction book Digital Soldiers provided inspiration for aspects of the technology, and my sister was of great help.
Locus Online has a review of this issue as a thematic whole. And a review in Japanese.
This made the honorable mention list in one of Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies. Wow. Thanks to Greg for pointing that out.
Kendra knew with every pulse of her blood what the people of Liadhe remembered best about Sharadon Brent: his steady eyes and pale hair and shining medals, hero of battles past...the scandal when he left Liadhe after a war to become a mercenary, wandering among foreign stars. Warmonger, they called him now, the man who loved bloodshed so deeply he abandoned his home in peacetime.
It was different for her. She remembered instead his strong hands drawing chord after chord, descant after shimmering descant, from his lute. An anachronism, that lute, requiring human hands to sing. Years ago Kendra had listened drowsily while Sharadon Brent tuned the seven strings, adjusted the frets, serenaded the night. His voice haunted her, too: as quiet in song as in speech, yet she had ached for it later, after they called him to the war against Veretys....
Echoes Down an Endless Hall
A military sf short story, published in F&SF Apr. 2000. Dedicated to Paradox. I am also grateful to the Critters (an online SF/F/H critique group), Liyet, and Paul U. for their help.
They tested me again and again to ensure that the implant had properly salvaged the functions of damaged tissues. "An experimental procedure," a doctor said once, actually volunteering information. I had learned to hoard my questions. In return, they accepted it when I chose not to say if I felt any pain here, or here, or here, if I remembered. Perhaps they thought I no longer understood pain, or my past. They were right on one count.
Red Knight, they called me, like a chess piece. I tried to tell them that there was no red knight in chess, that it could never be played. They never answered.
The Hundredth Question
A light military sf short story, published in F&SF Feb. 1999. Dedicated in spirit to Ben Reynolds at Johns Hopkins, a wonderful teacher of writing. (When I sent out the story I hadn't thought of including a dedication. Sorry, Mr. Reynolds!)
You didn't want to be here, not really, not ever, but want is a one-way word these days. The government says jump, you ask what delta-vee. So here you are, wherever here is in the continuum of worlds, every reflex tuned to snapping. Fresh out of training, you have yet to trade scars with one of the aliens' battleships; no one's yet engaged one face-to-face and lived to brag about it, if they have faces.
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