Hello, hello! Have you missed me? I have not been telling you about short fiction lately, but I am inspired by the start of a new semester to resume my short fiction reading, even though semesters are meaningless in my life now that I am no longer (thank God) in school. Suitably, though, I am starting with a kind of story that I’m a sucker for, the kind that is written like a pretend piece of scholarship. You know the way to my heart, M. E. Bronstein. “Elegy of a Lanthornist,” by M. E. Bronstein (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 6700 words)…
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Fantastic news, months have returned! I read a finite, yet manageable, number of short stories in April, and I am here to tell you about the best of them. Because I am predictable, each story is about some combination of the following themes: the nature of truth flora and fauna living and dying fraught familial relationships Aliette de Bodard’s “The Dragon that Flew Out of the Sun” (3780 words, Uncanny) is one of the first short stories I read in the month of April, and it reminded me of all the reasons I love short fiction. We begin with a…
Leave a CommentThe new development for 2019 is that time has no meaning and there is no such thing as a month of reading short fiction, and therefore I can never say what short fiction reads were the best of that month, because that set of words make no sense under the new world order. NO MORE MONTHS. Erm, but actually, work just got busy, and I fell behind in my short fiction reading. SORRY. Please accept instead this very belated post plus a link to info about the Hugo nominees for this year. I, a short-fiction-reading person, have read five of…
Leave a CommentWow, I had this post all planned out in my mind, and then at the very last moment, Tor.com came along with not one BUT TWO circus stories. I don’t know if y’all know this about me, but I hold the controversial opinion that Circus Shoes is the second-best of Noel Streatfeild’s Shoes books, yes, BETTER THAN SKATING SHOES. (This opinion is mainly controversial insofar as very few people know that Circus Shoes even exists.) I read Circus Shoes when I was nine years old, and I’ve been chasing that circus high ever since. (A complaint: If anybody has written…
Leave a CommentI’ve had so few accomplishments in 2018, but one thing I’m proud of is successfully incepting myself into the world of short fiction. Last year I read like, three short stories. This year I read close to three hundred, and I got so into it that I commissioned a logo about it. It’s rare in a month of short story reading that I’ll have a clear best-of, but in December I did. Zen Cho writes deceptively gentle and adorable stories that draw from Asian mythology — deceptively gentle because they pack a hell of an emotional punch. “If at First…
Leave a CommentI am not trying to antagonize Robert Silverberg or anything, but there are no men in my best-of-October-and-November column. Which is a good reminder of why I am getting so heavily back into speculative fiction after some time spent canoodling with literary fiction: Though the black spec fic and publishing diversity numbers make it very clear that we have a long way to go yet, it is much much easier to find SFF by people who aren’t white or male than when I was a kid trying to discover if SFF wanted me there. And that’s what I’m grateful for,…
Leave a CommentThe accidental theme of this month’s Shortly Ever After is perspective, and the vastly different worlds we inhabit depending on where we’re standing. (I’m trying so hard not to say anything about These Troubled Times ™ because it’s beginning to seem like I have lost the ability to write a blog post without referencing These Troubled Times ™, but I swear to God I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it!) While I do love SFF for its mad ideas about what could be or might be someday, I also love its ability to make me…
Leave a CommentIt’s August, and I am so delighted to roll out my brand! new! logo! I commissioned the marvelous Ira to design a Shortly Ever After logo, which I am now delighted to reveal to you. In honor of this exciting occasion, I have a massive installment of the column for the month of August. Many, many novellas came out this month, and I am here to bring you the best ones around. First up, I want to start with two novellas from Book Smugglers Publishing, whose work is consistently weird, queer, and wonderful. This month they’re releasing a paired set…
Leave a CommentI write this post having conducted a mass slaughter of wasps on my front and back porches, heeding the advice of the internet to purchase a wasp-slaughtering project rather than swatting at their nest with a large stick and running away. (Internet: So bossy!) Glittery, limp bodies of dead wasps litter my front and back doorsteps. This is not a metaphor for anything; it is a merely factual report. A very happy summer to you, and now let’s get to the stories! I mostly do prefer to be positive in this space, but I was deeply, deeply frustrated with “Three…
Leave a CommentAll right, I am sufficiently settled into my new status as Short Story Advisor that I have decided to give this monthly feature a proper name. I am calling it Shortly Ever After, with thanks to the writers and editors of Lady Business for naming assistance, and I will never stop doing it until you pry it from my cold dead hands because I’m all about short stories now and that is just my life. Next month I’m going to have a DAMN LOGO, that’s how serious I am about my newfound short story obsession. (Never before has a New…
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