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March 31, 2023

My Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Short Fiction Roundup for February/March 2023


The art for this roundup is a detail of Asya Yordanova's cover for the March issue of The Dark Magazine. More about the artist at https://www.artstation.com/asya_yordanova.

An audio version of this roundup is available on YouTube:


For more of my story picks, check out my latest Short Fiction Treasures column at Strange Horizonshttp://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/short-fiction-treasures-quarterly-fiction-roundup-6/

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Icariana by Wen-yi Lee in Baffling Magazine

I adore every last bit of this story, including this masterful opening paragraph that sets up everything you need to know for what’s to follow:

I find her by the riverbed after the end of the world, wings tucked under her grubby ribs. Some new kind of being, or else some rich maniac’s attempt to engineer homo deux before it all went down. Or went up. Tides, lava, nukes, spaceships. Those last ones, especially, aren’t ever coming back down.

Lee finds beauty, tenderness, and caring in a harsh world, and stitches the relationship between the two girls, one with wings and one without, with exquisite care and skill.

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A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen by Margrét Helgadóttir in Slate

Svalbard had become a popular center in the Arctic Ocean after the Great Ice vanished. Then, as the world became increasingly uninhabitable, people sought out the Arctic for more than holidays and business. Fleeing the deadly sunlight in the south and the wars that had broken out in the wake of the fatal climate change, the swarms of refugees had steadily grown over the past century.

This story is set in a future where climate change has made much of the world difficult, or impossible, to live in, and where Svalbard, in the Arctic Ocean, has become a home for climate refugees. In Svalbard, Longyearbyen is home to thousands of these refugees, and it’s also home to a zoo inhabited by cloned animals that no longer exist in the wild. The most famous animal at the zoo is a lion, Levi, who may or may not be one of the last wild-born lions in the world. But now, Levi is gone from his cage and everyone is looking for him, including one very determined hunter. In Helgadóttir’s story, this changed world, and the many things humanity has lost, is interwoven with several characters who all have their own reasons for trying to find Levi. I love the ending, in all its sadness, violence, and tenderness.

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The State Street Robot Factory by Claire Humphrey in Apex Magazine

New story by Claire Humphrey? That’s always a must-read in my book. (Her story “Wooden Boxes Lined with the Tongues of Doves” published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies in 2017 is still one of my all-time favourite short stories.) In this new science fiction story, we follow Darius who lost both his legs in an accident and who now makes small robots that he sells, trying to make enough money to buy himself a pair of legs. Humphrey sketches in the future-Chicago Darius lives in, and the larger world, with a gentle, precise touch: “Darius was never a soldier, though. He hadn’t even been in the reserves. Not even at the height of the recent global conflict, when many of his friends had enlisted for jobs like loading supply trains or inspecting munitions.” This might be a small story, about one person trying to carve out a life in a harsh city, but it shines because Humphrey gives the story, and Darius, such a big heart.

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Them Doghead Boys by Alex Jennings at PseudoPod (narrated by Dominick Rabrun, first published in Current Affairs Magazine)

Well, carve out some time in your day and give this story a listen, or a read. A knockout, masterfully written tale set in a New Orleans neighbourhood inhabited by dogheaded boys, vampires, a few ghosts, and maybe even a few magic users capable of calling down a piece of the night. Violence, and the threat of violence, permeates every bit of this tale where families and friendships, and blood, can bind, change, and sunder people. Jennings weaves a rich and vivid world here, a world so deep and real it feels like it extends off the page, taking place in a universe all its own. It's a story with a narrator, and a voice, that grabs you by the scruff from the get-go as we are brought into a world of shapeshifters, magic, darkness, monsters, and ancient gods. 

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Mother’s Teeth by E. L. Chen in The Dark

I love this story. I love the way it absolutely chilled me to the bone. I love the way it crept under my skin. And I love the way Chen twists and turns the horror, making it glint of pain and grief and loneliness beneath the hunger and the fear. A boy is visited by a shadow every night, looming outside his bedroom window. The shadow brings his dead mother’s teeth, and her teeth tap on the window, and it brings his mother’s voice, whispering his name. There is a ghost here, but there is also the house the boy lives in, a house with a darkness of its own, reaching out for the boy, staining the room and maybe staining souls too. Chen’s prose is marvelous, tender and subtle, dark and compelling.

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Notes From a Pyre, by Amal Singh in The Deadlands

Singh's story is science fiction story about death. Does that sound bleak? It's not. Rather, this is a gentle, emotionally powerful story told in a strong, yet quiet voice about boy and the passing of his grandfather, and about the grandfather's research about the beliefs and rituals various alien species have concerning death. Singh interweaves the grandfather's research notes with the boy's account of what happens after his grandfather dies, about the rituals and rites performed, about how the people in the family react to the death. There's a beautiful web of connections spun between all these various people and creatures and the different ways they handle their dead, and how they think about death, and there is a life-affirming light shining through every word and sentence of the tale.

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About Her Bones So Bleak And Bare by Matthew F. Amati in Flash Fiction Online

The dead girl had never been a favorite of ours, and now she wouldn’t leave our yard.

I watched black birds wheel like burnt crosses over the fields. The sun fell, dragging the sky down with it until the last light shone on our freakish visitor.

A fabulous story from the March issue of Flash Fiction Online, and it feels like a dark fairytale wrapped inside the present day. In the interview at FFO, Amati says that the story was inspired by "...the early Scots border ballad “The Twa Corbies” Two crows talk about a dead knight whose corpse they’re planning to pick apart." It is a wonderfully evocative and ominous flash story.

Upon What Soil They Fed by Jennifer Mace in Flash Fiction Online (first published in Syntax & Salt)

I once visited a home where brambles had grown so high that they drank all the light before it even touched the walls.

Oh what a wondrous, gorgeously wrought story this is. A dark fairytale planted and growing in the midst of our own time and place where a sales person selling frozen meat products ends up in a house surrounded by brambles where everything grows and seems inclined to keep you from leaving.

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Unimagined Delicacy by Lyndsie Manusos in Hex Literary

He picks up dirt with one arm. And then another. The suckers on each limb grab at the dirt, and he throws it in waves behind him. There is Miracle Grow in this soil, he sees by the specks of white and the over-earthy scent. It makes his skin itch. His arms are red at the tips, the suckers are swollen. But still, he must dig.

A fabulousstory of a transformation gone awry (maybe), where the transformed must deal with the aftermath of what happened in the laboratory. Manusos masterfully tells us a full-bodied, eight-armed tale in flash fiction format, and I know I was rooting for good old Jeffrey at the end. Let's hope he made it to the ocean...

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The Field Guide for Next Time by Rae Mariz in khōréō

When a child learns to speak, their first word is a gift. It is a butterfly wing that swirls the dust motes ignited by the sunlight. A snowflake that shatters an arctic sea to match its fractal pattern. The glitter on sand in the desert at dusk. A distant star shifting its color.

This issue of khōréō is well worth picking up, and not just for this glistening tale of how better futures are possible, even after a terrible past. The story is told as if it is the text found on a winding, woven tapestry, telling the tale of a society that has survived a changing world and found better ways to live, better ways to exist in the world, than what we might think is possible right now. It's a beautiful story, filled with hope, even as the people in this better future also remember the grief and loss of the past.

For more excellent fiction by Rae Mariz, check out her novella Weird Fishes.

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Haunting the Docks, by Marie Vibbert at Cast of Wonders, narrated by Roderick Aust

No one comes to my dock anymore. It’s so empty I can hear the ping of metal struts relaxing. The sounds of life elsewhere on the station, transmitted through multiple bulkheads, are muted, inchoate moans. I cycle through checks on systems unperturbed by human hands. I tidy what is already tidy.

This is a perfectly hilarious flash fiction story about a sentient dock on Jupiter that is having a little bit of trouble attracting, and keeping, visitors. Why would people avoid this dock? Well, it might have something to do with how it seems haunted... or maybe it's the somewhat problematic way the dock chooses to communicate with visitors? Charming and funny, and with some very sassy bots to boot.

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“Narratology” by Peter Young, written by Cadwell Turnbull at Many Worlds

Gustave Flaubert was in a brothel, a woman's legs wrapped tightly around his thrusting hips when it entered him at climax. He screamed like he had been run through with electric knives.

"What is wrong with you?" asked the woman.

Gustave didn’t answer because it told him not to. He went home, and in his dreams, the thing spoke to him. It told Gustave that he would be its vessel and it would make Gustave a famous writer. 

Something happens to Gustave Flaubert that changes the course of his life, and his creativity. Something enters him, an entity described as "the narrator", and for the rest of Flaubert's life, he is never free of its influence. Turns out, the narrator is not alone, and soon other narrators will test the waters. There are several meta-layers to this story, including the bio of the presumed author Peter Young, that is another wrinkle in the tale of the narrators.

Many Worlds is a writing collective (and fair notice: I recently sold a reprint to Many Worlds, which means I am now listed as one of the collective's authors), writing stories that all fit into an overall narrative about "the Simulacrum":

"They call this entity the Simulacrum and its collection of worlds the Simulacra. The Simulacrum doesn’t just copy the world, it adjusts it, adds things to the world, deletes other things. But its most terrifying power is its ability to alter meaning: to change what people care about or find interesting or the very relationships people have to things, to other people, to themselves."

For more about Many Worlds, and more stories set in this universe, check out https://www.manyworldsforum.com/concept 

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The Book of Gems, by Fran Wilde

This novella is out later this year and is available for preorder now at: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250196569/thebookofgems

The official blurb from the publisher:

It’s been centuries since the Jeweled Valley and its magical gems were destroyed. In the republics that rose from its ashes, scientists craft synthetic jewels to heat homes, power gadgetry, and wage war.

Dr. Devina Brunai is one of these scientists. She also is the only person who believes true gems still exist. The recent unearthing of the Palace of Gems gives her the perfect opportunity to find them and prove her naysayers wrong.

Her chance is snatched away at the last moment when her mentor steals her research and wins the trip for himself. Soon, his messages from the field transform into bizarre ramblings about a book, a Prince, and an enemy borne of the dark. Now Dev must enter the Valley, find her mentor, and save her research before they, like gems, become relics of a time long forgotten.

I just read an Advance Reading Copy of this novella, set in Fran Wilde's magnificent, terrifying, gorgeously evocative Gem Universe. The novella is a terrific read, a true page-turner, set in a world that is gripping and vividly brought to life and where there are unique and profound ties between gems and magic and people. If this really is the last Gem Universe book, then it's a worthy, and quite spectacular ending. As so often in Wilde's work, it's relationships that are at the heart of the story. In this case, it's the friendship and bond between the gem scientist, Devina Brunai and Lurai, a young woman living in the Valley who has already lost her mother at the ancient, excavated Palace of Gems. The Book of Gems digs into the past, and finds terrifying and beautiful treasures, and maybe even a new kind of future.

I've read and loved all the other stories set in Wilde's Gem Universe. If you want to check them out, there are two short stories in Beneath Ceaseless Skies:

And two novellas:

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March 6, 2023

BEHIND THE ZINES with Jennifer R. Donohue, author of speculative short fiction, novellas, and a new novel


At Behind the Zines this month, I'm talking to Jennifer R. Donohue and going behind the zines completely to talk about self-publishing. Donohue's short fiction has been published in magazines like Apex and Fantasy Magazine. She has also self-published several novellas and her self-published debut novel, Exit Ghost, is out March 7. I'm thrilled to be able to talk to her about her experience with self-publishing and the joys and challenges of getting your work out into the world without a publisher as intermediary.

 


More about Jennifer R. Donohue:

Jennifer  R. Donohue grew up at the Jersey Shore and now lives in central New  York with her husband and her Doberman. She is a Codexian and an  Associate member of the SFWA, and short fiction has appeared in Daily  Science Fiction, Apex, Syntax & Salt, Escape Pod, and elsewhere. Her  cyberpunk novella series Run With the Hunted is available on most  digital platforms. She tweets @AuthorizedMusin.

More about Exit Ghost:

After her father is murdered and an attempt is made on her  life, New Jersey heiress and witch Juliet Duncan is supposed to be  concentrating on getting better and moving forward. Instead, Jules  summons her father's ghost using her blood and tears and his old rotary  phone to answer the question: who did it? He reveals it was Hector, her  dad’s best friend and her mom’s new fiancé.

Certain  her life is still in danger, Jules flees the family estate to the Asbury  Park apartment she shares with her best friend and fellow witch, Ashes.  When another friend joins them, all three women get caught up with a  secret boyfriend who’s also big into magic, but in all the wrong ways,  all while Jules wrestles with whether her father’s ghost was telling the  truth. But what Jules does know is that power has its cost, and she is  more than willing to pay the price in order to get her revenge.

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Q. First up: what’s your background, and what do you do outside the world of speculative fiction writing?

JD: I was born in New Jersey and went to college for psychology in a small town in central New York, where I ended up staying after graduation. My husband and I went to college together, and staying in town afterwards just made sense to us. What I do for my day job (my non writing career?) is I work at my local public library; I was on the circulation desk and then in charge of interlibrary loan for my first years there, and now I do what the library world calls “tech services,” I do the book ordering, and then receive and process them. There’s also the joke in libraryland (probably other fields as well) that our job descriptions all contain “other duties as required.” In addition to ordering materials, I’ve helped with our local history materials, I’ve researched the building’s construction projects, helped coordinate room remodels and asbestos abatement projects, and I’ve run a writing workshop there since 2014. The writing workshop feels a little bit like cheating; what a dream it is, to be able to write at work!

Since getting dogs (we’ve had them one at a time, but it’s been two now,) my ambient interest in animal behavior and dog training expanded, and I’ve said that I have to use my psychology degree for something, and so dogs it is. I was even a dog blogger for a little while, before the whole ‘fiction career’ thing got traction.

Q. What attracted you to the speculative fiction genre when you were a child or young adult (or adult)? What was your gateway into the world of speculative fiction?

JD: I was born in the 80s, and a lot of the media then (that I remember) was very fantasy/scifi/genre mashup, and I think that’s really influenced me my whole life. I read far more “literary” fiction than genre for a really long time, which might be what landed me in that “too speculative to be literary and too literary to be speculative” niche at times. The very first scifi book that I ever remember reading is The Magic Meadow by Alexander Key, though one of my aunts also lent me The Earthsea trilogy and The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings once I was old enough for those. I did used to try to write more literary fiction, especially in college when I was taking writing classes, but also in high school I hand wrote (but never finished) 1000 pages of an epic fantasy novel with many dragons and characters but no real plot.

Q. I always love reading your work and you have had many short stories published in various speculative fiction zines over the years, including "Into the Dark" in Fantasy Magazine and "A Country of Eternal Light" in Apex Magazine. Your novella The Drowned Heir was published last year, and you have a novel called Exit Ghost coming out in March. Both the novel and the novella are fabulous reads, and both are self-published. Can you talk a bit about why you decided to go the self-publishing route for these stories?

JD: Thank you so much!

I actually did try to go a more traditional route with both The Drowned Heir and also Exit Ghost. With The Drowned Heir, I submitted it to both magazines and small presses that accepted those lengths (20k words.) After a few years of that, though, and after putting out several books in my Run With the Hunted series, I thought “well fine, I’ll just do it myself,” and put it out in ebook and hardcover.

Similarly, with Exit Ghost, I queried agents with it……….starting in 2020. Querying agents is difficult in the best of times, but the pandemic really made things that much harder on all levels. I did get several full requests, and continued querying for perhaps longer than I otherwise would have while waiting on a very exciting, high profile agent to decide, and when that rejection finally came, I thought “well fine, I’ll just do it myself.”

Q. Can you describe the work involved in getting your work ready for publication when you self-publish. How do you go about the process of editing, getting a cover, and then publishing and distributing your work?

JD: Most of my covers come from screwing around with things on Canva until I arrive at something that I don’t hate. I’m actually personally a minimalist when it comes to book covers; as a reader, I’ve been frustrated with movie tie in covers, or covers that have people on them that don’t end up representing the characters as they are on the page, and I would just as soon have a black book with the title and author name on it, and maybe some cool embossed designs, like those leatherbound-with-a-ribbon-bookmark editions of things that get put out.

I benefit greatly from having very good friends (some of whom are also writers) who are willing to read my stuff for me, ranging from short stories on up to novels. My ultimate proofreader has been my friend since high school, and I’m super grateful for his keen eye.

I use Draft2Digital for my formatting, and for distributing my non-Amazon ebooks. I’ve done paperback on Amazon, and the hardcovers through IngramSpark (who then will distribute to Amazon and everywhere.) I find it very frustrating that Amazon will only do preorders for digital items, and that is one reason I have not tried out their (new) hardcover options. In general, I like the Amazon book building tools better than Ingram’s, but that ability to run preorders is just too compelling.

Q. What are some of the things you’ve learned about the self-publishing process? Any insights, tips and tricks, or bloopers you’d like to share? What are some of the biggest joys and some of the hardest challenges?

JD: The very first time I formatted a book for self publishing (Run With the Hunted, back in 2018), I came to the belated realization that everything that is in the book has to be in the file when I upload it, which is VERY obvious but I wasn’t thinking about, say, an author bio, when I was in the homestretch of getting that ready. Since then, Draft2Digital has really expanded their tools, and you can add things like the dedication, copyright page, author bio, etc. in their interface (they don’t pay me for being happy with them, I’ve just found them crucial to my process!)

It’s truly a joy to see people engage with my work, be it discussion with a podcast or even just somebody responding to a meme that I put on twitter. These are characters and events that only existed in my head for however long, so seeing how they exist in the world is delightful. It’s also really exciting if somebody picks up on a reference that I’m making, or even mentions liking something that I am particularly pleased with or proud of.

Q. For writers who might be interested in doing this for themselves, what advice would you give?

JD: It’s important to be pragmatic, and behave professionally. Did I think I would be rich and famous by now, perhaps even discovered by a big publisher who wanted to do a run of my books, and then movie producers who want to bring my work to the screen? Maybe! We hear those self-publishing success stories, like with Hugh Howey, and E. L. James, and many others. I guess it could still happen at any moment, given my ever-growing back catalog, but it hasn’t yet. Does that mean I’m going to stop? Absolutely not. I write first and foremost for myself, and then also because I want to be read.

And I am read! People, not just my family or friends, but strangers have bought my books, and even rated or reviewed them, and that’s a really gratifying experience. People who I don’t have social currency with are still interested in my work, and I hope that they continue to be.

When I say behave professionally, that includes treating your fellow writer and other peers with respect, and also never going after reviewers, which is something that happens with alarming frequency, and is wildly inappropriate. Not everybody is going to love your book and give the ratings that you hope for, and that is just part of the territory. You can complain to your friends if you need to, or your group chat, venting can be really important, but that’s for private.

Q. What are your thoughts on the business of speculative fiction publishing and the challenges and joys of taking control of that process yourself? And also any thoughts you have on the challenge of getting self-published work reviewed and noticed for awards season?

JD: It’s really very freeing to be beholden only to myself. I push preorders because that is a thing that is “done,” but having a shortfall in expected preorders isn’t going to get anything canceled, if that make sense. I’ll continue to put out Run With the Hunted as long as I’m having fun with it. I’m publishing Exit Ghost as my debut because it is my most personal novel. When I publish my trilogy of werewolf books, I won’t have to worry about an editor rejecting my books 2 and 3 and sending me back to a blank page.

Admittedly, it is difficult being my own marketing department. I don’t have a background in it, and my self-promotion has largely been on Twitter, which is the social media site that’s meshed best with my own habits and how my brain works. And it is very hard getting self-published work reviewed and noticed for awards season; indeed, and I might be wrong, but self-published novellas (and probably novels, but I didn’t have a novel out when I looked this up) didn’t used to be eligible for the Nebula Award, but are now eligible for the Nebula and Hugo. But even my non-self-published short stories haven’t gotten awards nomination levels of attention, so it’s difficult to know what will hit the cultural consciousness just right and then sustain that attention right up until awards nominations. So many writers are producing work at such amazing levels, it’s really a privilege to have these stellar peers.

Q. Talk a bit about your new book, Exit Ghost. It’s a witchy story that might have some connections to a certain work by Shakespeare, with dead father, witches, and a Yorick (even though your Yorick is a dog). How did this story come to you and what kind of journey has it been to get it to publication?

JD: I’ve loved Shakespeare from my first contact, which I think was Romeo and Juliet during my freshman year of high school. That teacher taught two half-year Shakespeare electives, so my sophomore year of high school, I just spend the whole year immersed in Shakespeare, which he taught by actually just having us watch the plays, as is kind of the whole point of plays. There were a lot of BBC productions (The Taming of the Shrewwas the notable one I remember of those) and then a lot of Hollywood Shakespeare around that time, so we watched Romeo + Juliet, and Kenneth Branaugh’s Hamlet, and Laurence Fishburn’s Othello. I don’t remember which Macbeth we saw, maybe that was BBC as well, though when we did Macbethin junior year English, we watched the 1971 film that was produced by Playboy, and we as a class were very mature about that. Since then, I’ve happily watched a number of Macbeths (Patrick Stewart’s is particularly good) and King Lears (no surprise that Anthony Hopkins’ is very good) and other Hamlets.

There is an unfortunate category of my writing that is “my dad died and I’m sad about it,” and this novel falls under that heading.

My original idea for this novel was actually two separate ideas for two separate novels, one a thriller-y sort of thing that was a modern girl Hamlet but not speculative, and one that had nothing to do with Hamlet and was two friends who were witches in 1970’s Asbury Park, NJ. Both of those drafts petered out, as things sometimes will, and then I got the notion to combine them, so I essentially shuffled them like a deck of cards, picking the elements that I liked from both, and then wrote to The End. Then came my own rewrites and edits and adjustments, and then my trusted first readers got it, and then the dreaded query letter and synopsis, and Exit Ghost started hitting agent inboxes in January of 2020.

In the course of querying, I did get several full requests, some of which took longer for that rejection than others, and I waited an entire year to the day for a particularly high-profile agent’s full rejection. Had that agent not requested the full, I might not have queried for more than two years, but in November of 2022, when all was said and done, I’d written four more novels while waiting (they always say “write something else,” right?) in addition to three Run With the Hunted novellas, and I decided that I didn’t want to wait for rounds of small press slush pile submissions. I was seeing witch novels getting published, I was tired of waiting, and that was that.

Q. As a fellow dog lover, I approve very much of Yorick in this story. I know you are a Doberman lover in real life too, so I’m guessing it was important for you to include not just any dog, but this particular dog. What’s so great about Dobermans? 😊

JD: It’s funny, first draft Yorick was actually a mastiff, due to their occasional historic estate guardian roles, and then I thought it would be very funny if he was a Great Dane, giving the certain work by Shakespeare that Exit Ghost is inspired by/in dialogue with, but really, he always needed to be a Doberman. The Doberman Party Line is that they are the first/only breed that was created with personal protection in mind, and while I have never protection trained a dog, I can absolutely testify to the breed’s need to be with their people at all times. Our first Doberman, Elka, was eerily intelligent, and our current Doberman, Ulrike, is one of the sweetest dogs that I have ever known, and both of them performed the important role of “rest for my left elbow” as I’ve sat on the couch with a laptop in addition to their other duties of alerting us to neighborhood goings-on an getting me out of the house for constitutionals. Dobermans want to be with their people, and also would love to share whatever it is that you’re eating. I’m absolutely heart and soul sold on them as the breed for me.

Q. I loved your novella, The Drowned Heir, and found its description of magic and the society it takes place in to be fascinating and uniquely imagined. It’s a place where people are literally magicked into being possessed by the deceased. Tell us a bit about the inspiration for that story the world you created.

JD: I literally dreamed the first line of The Drowned Heir: “They drown me when my uncle dies.” I woke up and immediately wrote that down, so I wouldn’t lose it, and then texted it to one of my aforementioned writer friends who was like “well that’s a lot.” I went about my morning, but the sentence stuck with me, and the general textural feeling of that scene, the place in the rocks where the water comes up, the salt, the strangeness of it all. I very rarely plan when I write, and it was no different when I wrote The Drowned Heir; I started at the start, and wrote to the end. The first draft was about half the length but contained essentially the entire plot arc, and then I went back and expanded it because it just didn’t seem like enough.

Q. Is there anything in particular you want to promote here, some exciting projects coming up for you in the near future?

JD: With all of my Exit Ghost promotion, I don’t yet have any sense of what comes next. There will be another Run With the Hunted in October (book 6! Title as yet undecided!) so that gives people who are new to the series plenty of time to catch up with the first five novellas. I’ll release a Run With the Hunted short story collection eventually, but need a few more to make it a reasonable length. It’s such a fun project, and I love playing with those characters and their points of view.

I do have a short story forthcoming in Interzone, and another that’s a secret right now, because the anthology hasn’t yet done the Table of Contents reveal but that I’m very excited for.

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Thanks so much to Jennifer R. Donohue for talking to me!

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About Behind the Zines:

In this interview series, I talk to people working behind the scenes at various speculative fiction publications. My goal is to highlight the work that goes into keeping these publications alive, and to share insights from the people doing that work. Each interview is available exclusively on my Patreon for one week, and is then posted here at Maria's Reading.

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If you want to support my work, check out my Patreon or Ko-Fi.