2018 Awards Eligibility Post

Tap-tap-tap… Is this thing on?

So…this is my FIRST(!) EVER(!) Awards Eligibility Post™ for the fantasy and science fiction short stories of mine that were published this year. (Or in any year, for that matter.) This is a whole, brand new world to me.

Nomination season for fantasy and science fiction has opened up!

I hope you’ll take a look through these offerings and if, per chance, one catches your eye and your mind as award worthy, please slip it onto your nominating ballot. If not, I hope these stories at least give you a few minutes of reading pleasure.

(The story titles in the larger font I feel are especially worth a good, hard look.)

• The Consequential Effects of Practiced Penmanship, Abyss & Apex Issue #66, 1 April 2018. Fantasy | 3600 words

Time cracks and uhrbuchs rustle. I look up from a half-penciled illustration.

 

• Shattered Hand, Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #258, 16 August 2018. Fantasy, 4600 words

Long shadows skittered before us, cast by a newly risen sun. Kayta and I loped across burnt desert; tracked the wind-eroded dusty treads of uncounted pilgrims, Covenant youth, warriors. Evaded what few sentries patrolled the perimeter. Empty sky, empty land, no one, nothing to see. A banned land. Minimally guarded—uncovenanted entry is death.

 

• Requires Replenishment, Martian, the Magazine of Science Fiction Drabbles, 20 August 2018. Science Fiction | 100 words

Hot tires buzzing.

Backseat child whimpering.

Dead alien in trunk.

 

• The Memory of a Memory, Syntax & Salt 2018 Issue #3, 22 September 2018. Fantasy | 600 words

I crack time. Part the seam, step into gray-green gloom. I wait as eyes adjust, hear the seam flutter closed. Bookshelves line the corridor, extend into the past. Shelves crammed with books, spines to the wall, smelling of ozone and rose water. Hardcovers, paperbacks, trades, loose leaf. The past as hardcopy, minutes pressed against minutes, fossilizing through time.

 

• A Multitude of Sparks Descend, Galaxy’s Edge Issue #35, November 2018. Science fantasy | 700 words

Where are you? I trace ringing photons, syncopated cosmic ray beats, attenuated quaverings of taut space-time chords. Entangled atoms vibrating in quantum indecision sustain my faith. I range across light-years, plow gigaparsecs of quantum foam, dark matter tides, neutrino cacophonies. 

 

Keep reading! And if you’re a writer, keep writing!

Tammy and I say Bless all y’all!