'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 67

Friday Flash Fics — “Brewing”

Today’s Friday Flash Fics made me think of Jace, of course, which let me delve a bit more into what’s going on with him and Matthew in the events after Triad Blood and Triad Soul. There’s no real spoilers here, beyond their being together, so even if you’ve not read the books, this should be fine. Matthew Stirling has a gift for prescience, which he inherited magically along his family bloodline, and he’s been feeling something coming for a while.

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Brewing

Matthew rolled over, lazily sliding a hand beneath the blanket and reaching out for Jace, intent on something naughty. When he came up with nothing but sheet, he frowned, and opened his eyes.

Jace had already gotten up.

So much for naughty.

He stretched, his shoulders popping and languishing in feeling both well rested and comfortable. He never slept like this in the Stirling Chantry, and it was getting harder and harder not to think about what that meant.

At least tonight there’d been no dreams.

Matthew rolled his head the other way. The sun hadn’t begun to rise yet, and that meant Jace couldn’t have been up long. He allowed himself one more stretch inside the warm bed, grabbed his glasses from the bedside table, then slid out and started hunting for his boxers in the chilly air.

He couldn’t wait for spring.

He got dressed and checked the kitchen—no sign of Jace—so he set up the coffee machine he’d bought Jace for Christmas, humming a little to himself while he worked. He had a good idea where Jace was now, and if he was right, he’d be ready for a cup of something hot once he got back. He eyed the fridge, but he was at best a passable cook, and Jace was way, way better at breakfasts than he was.

He’d stick to making the coffee.

He filled the jug with water, and then paused, looking at the surface of the liquid in the simple glass container.

He exhaled magic, shaped it with instinct, the way his magic always worked—more of a reflex than by design—and felt it move into the water. Water was his element, and his gift tended to lend itself to the ephemeral. Sensations, intuitions.

Prediction.

The water swirled, and he waited for something to appear on the surface.

Nothing did.

He exhaled again, with relief, not magic.

Whatever it was? It wasn’t today.

He poured the water into the machine and slid the carafe to catch the brewed coffee.

While the coffee machine started to gurgle and hiss, Matthew grabbed a couple of mugs and the milk and then went to the sliding glass door at the back of the small living room, waiting.

It didn’t take long.

The first glimpse was just motion out of the corner of his eye, but it meant he knew where to look among the snow and trees. The second time, he caught the shape and smiled.

The wolf was sniffing the air, puffs of breath visible in the cold. From the distance, it was harder to tell just how large the wolf was—nearly double the size of any to be found in the wild—and you couldn’t see its eyes, which Matthew knew first had just looked… different.

It wasn’t that they didn’t match the eyes of a regular wolf. They did. It was the way they looked at you that was different.

Behind him, the coffee machine finished its work and he went back and poured two mugs, adding milk to one and leaving the other black. Then he crossed back to the glass door and slid it open, stepping outside with both cups.

In the distance, the wolf tipped its head back and howled. A plume of breath steamed out as the notes slid along Matthew’s skin and made him shiver from the beauty of the sound.

In the distance, there were answering cries. There was no way to know if they were from Jace’s friends or other wild wolves.

The big wolf turned, loping out of the woods and across the back yard. At the half-way point, the cadence of its pace changed, and it slowed, muscles rippling beneath the fur and body twisting and broadening across the shoulders while twisting at the waist. It rose onto crooked back legs that straightened with every step, and as Matthew held the mugs—and his breath—the fur seemed to slide away as what was once a wolf but was now a man approached the deck behind the house. Jace wasn’t wearing clothes, and the view was spectacular.

“You made coffee,” Jace said, stepping up onto the deck. Steam was rising from his skin. He was always almost hot to the touch after he changed from a wolf.

“I never get tired of this view,” Matthew said, holding out a mug.

Jace took it and sipped, seemingly not remotely bothered by standing barefoot in the snow. Then he leaned forward and kissed Matthew, a kiss that made it perfectly clear there would be no need for clothing any time soon.

“Good run, I take it?” Matthew said, once he’d come up for air.

Jace nodded, reaching past him and sliding open the door. He sort of crowded Matthew backwards through it, and Matthew grinned, backing up in increments.

“You sleep okay?” Jace said. It was said casually enough, but Jace had been woken up enough times in the last couple of months to know Matthew’s dreams were giving him trouble.

Which meant real trouble was on the way.

“I slept brilliantly. I can’t remember the last time I was so rested.” Matthew put his cup down on the coffee table. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had this much energy.”

“Oh yeah?” The rumble in Jace’s voice did things deep in Matthew’s stomach.

“Yeah.”

The next time Matthew got out of bed, he wasn’t alone. And they hadn’t beaten the sun.

He’d check the water again tomorrow.

 

 

#ShortStoryMonth Day Twenty-Three — “Coyote Love,” by Kraig Blackwelder

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Gore? Nope.

It was fairly easy for me to consider what genre of short story I’d likely consider for the daily theme of something that’s not my usual taste: horror. I don’t read a lot of horror because—totally willing to admit this—it gets in my head and sticks, often leading to awful nights of bad dreams. This is especially true of any story with gore. There’s a reason I avoid zombie fiction.

“Coyote Love” isn’t zombie fiction, but it’s got a particularly gory moment that stuck with me for ages. It opens the anthology Bending the Landscape: Original Gay and Lesbian Writing Horror, edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel, and this first story had me shuddering so much I put the damn book down for a couple of weeks. It’s about a closeted (and deeply homophobic and self-hating) gay man who gets a bit drunk and hooks up with another man, only to wake up and realize what he’s done.  The other man is heavy, and asleep, and happens to be on this man’s arm, which has gone numb, and he desperately wants to escape so…

Well. You know the stories about how Coyotes caught in traps will gnaw their own legs off to escape? Yeah. Gah.

It’s been years, and I still shudder, and honestly that’s a testament to how freaking well the story was written. It’s dark, there’s nothing redemptive about it, and the horror is entirely about homophobia and self-loathing. None of those things usually appeal to me as a reader, and yet this story still stands as one of the best pieces of (super disturbing) queer imagery I’ve encountered.

I’m also not generally a fan of violent and hopeless apocalypse stories, but “No Man is a Promontory,” by H.N. Janzen (from Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse) somehow juggled a violent heroine and a hopeless situation and left me intrigued and engaged rather than ready to bolt; also, to go back to horror, all the stories in Tom Cardamone’s Pumpkin Teeth had me really disturbed, but most especially the Suitcase Sammies, which… holy flying crap. Yeah, that imagery had me awake long into the night.

How about you? What are stories way outside your usual comfort zones that somehow snuck by and struck you regardless?

#ShortStoryMonth Day Twenty-Two — Side Character Short Fiction Requests

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Gimme

This is a bit different today, in that I don’t have short fiction to recommend, but rather short fiction I’d love to read that (as far as I know) doesn’t exist. Side characters or secondary characters or just supportive folk that appear in a story that I wish I could read more about always strike me as perfect for short fiction requests. I mean, the author already knows at least a little about those characters, right? A short story that revisits? Yes please!

And there’s no way I could break it down to just one, so… a list.

Joseph Carriker’s Sacred Band — A superhero novel I adored, I’d love, love, love for some short fiction set back in the original era when the superheroes were first popping up into existence. There’s a tonne of history referenced in this book, and it’d be neat to see some of it as short stories.
Fiona Riley’s Room Service — This novel, which follows two women working on a major project (one of them creating a design for the other’s new company office spaces) has a whole team working their butts off throughout the novel alongside the two romantic leading ladies; the rest of the team includes some hysterical folk, and any of them would be great for a short story.
Yolanda Wallace’s True Colors — This novel, about the daughter of a right-wing president and a reporter who has more than a few secrets and the sparks between them also includes the reporter’s BF (and boss), a guy who runs an antique shop, and he has a spark with one of the first daughter’s bodyguards/special agents. I loved those guys, and would love a story out of them.
Rebekah Weatherspoon’s Vampire Sorority Sisters series — Okay, I need to be clear how much I freaking love this series and it’s not missing anything. Vampire/demons and sororities set up to help them and sexy romances and oh my god. So good. Got it? Okay. But I so would love to read about the fraternity side! You get to glimpse the boys here and there and their vampires and… please?

What about you? Got side-characters you loved you’d love to see again in a short story?

#ShortStoryMonth Day Twenty-One — The Wilde Stories, Transcendent, and Heiresses of Russ series

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Simply the Best

The first time I picked up a Wilde Stories annual anthology, I was hooked. Also? I added it to my writerly bucket list. I wanted to appear in a collection since I loved them so much. I was lucky enough to have that particular event occur in the 2017 issue with a retelling of Frosty the Snowman (no, really), and then had the sadness of learning, the year after, that Wilde Stories was ending as a yearly series.

Sad me is sad.

But what was Wilde Stories? Curated by Steve Berman, since 2008, Wilde Stories gathered selections from a year’s worth of the gay speculative fiction, and I cannot tell you how awesome these collections are. Queer spec fic has a tendency to vanish (if it appears at all), and these collections—there’s also Transcendent (collections of trans spec fic, now on its fourth year) and Heiresses of Russ (collections of lesbian spec fic, which ran for six years)—where one of the few places to champion them.

So, it’s sad two out of three of the lines are now gone, but, if you haven’t read them, the queer spec community’s loss is your gain, since you can get twenty volumes of the various collections at the links above there from Lethe Press.

What about you? Do you have any “best-of” series you follow?

#ShortStoryMonth Day Twenty — “The Library of Lost Things,” by Matthew Bright

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Another Volume

I have so many authors I love who revisit characters on the regular, or settings on the regular, that I’m spoiled for riches, really. And though I always want more, I decided to take today’s prompt from the point of view of a story that—to my knowledge at least—is singular. So!

“The Library of Lost Things,” by Matthew Bright.

I loved this wee tale. It’s full to the brim with a slightly off-kilter weird fiction vibe that, in the hands of a skilled writer such as he, is entirely endearing. What’s a library of lost works? Well, it’s full of books that were considered, or abandoned, or written but lost, gathered through some version of magic or mystery or something. A librarian with a dark need for those of zero imagination or expansiveness to sort—without reading—those works? I mean, you already had me at the books.

Rats who’ve nibbled enough fiction to learn polysyllabic verbiage? And maybe, just maybe, a little bit of romance of a forbidden sort?

Yeah, just bring it.

Even better? You can even read it for free, at Tor.

There was a story in Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, Kathleen O’Malley’s “Silent Passion,” that was set on a world where aliens made (literally) deafening levels of noise, so a man (and his Deaf lover) travel there together, the man implanted with a device to render him functionally deaf, and I always wanted to go back there again; also Hank Edwards’ “Thaw,” which was a great story about two men meeting in the midst of an accident in a slightly future world that is our own, but after a disaster, from Bears of Winter.

#ShortStoryMonth Day Nineteen — “SCREAMING, CRYING, ALONE, AND AFRAID,” by Daliso Chaponda

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Turning a Theme Sideways

This Is How You Die is an anthology with a single unifying theme: machines made available around the world. The offer was tempting: with a simple blood test, anyone could know how they would die. But the machines didn’t give dates or specific circumstances—just a single word or phrase.

Oh man was “SCREAMING, CRYING, ALONE, AND AFRAID” good. First, although this is a contemporary story and more-or-less a murder mystery, it’s set in Zimbabwe, and the characters and culture involved spin the story differently than if it had been, say, downtown New York. I also loved the offhanded comment about the political race—it had never occurred to me that in a world full of Death Machines, revealing your result said something heroic would be a pathway to political gain.

The twist to this tale is having an investigator who decides to try—and succeeds—at testing the blood of murder victims, and in so doing wants to try to glean some information to track down what might be Zimbabwe’s first serial killer. The story is an excellent example of how uniquely the various authors are taking the Death Machine conceit, and going in unique directions.

That Daliso Chaponda is a comedian makes the twisted dark of this tale all the more amazeballs, really.

I also adore everything Chaz Brenchley has written (he’s a Brit), and though maybe it’s a cheat since I’m in Canada and the US is “another country” technically, I’m also gonna tell you to go grab everything Alex Jeffers ever did.

Sunday Shorts—Saints and Bodhisattvas by Joyce Chng

[image error]Is it okay to confess I have a vengeance streak a mile wide and really enjoy revenge stories in a review? Too late, I’m going to do it. “Saints and Bodhisattvas,” by Joyce Chng, is found in Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) and it hits the revenge note as a starting point, and I loved it.

A woman hires a ship—and a captain and crew in particular—to take the life of the man who killed her father. That the captain finds this woman attractive—something that has rarely happened, and is definitely not a great idea—threatens to put things slightly off-kilter. But a deal is a deal, and a vow is a vow, and a vow has been made.

Chng’s details make the prose overflow with scent and flavour and bring the setting to such a vibrant feel that you slip into the story’s historical and cultural world-building with a casual ease I’d envy if I wasn’t too busy enjoying it. Also? I’d love so many more tales from these characters, and what happens to them after this story. Which is pretty much the highest praise I can offer. Non-binary captain and post-revenge-seeking woman make their future on the waves? Yes, please.

In case it’s not clear, I love how these Scourge stories are bucking all the “traditional” takes on pirates (read: white straight guys).

#ShortStoryMonth Day Eighteen — “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History.”

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We Have Always Been Here

Finding queer historical fiction is… dicey. So often what’s written about us isn’t written by us, and the reality is history has been collected and watched over by the non-queer, white, Christian lens. So, basically, if there are queer stories? They’re so very often about suffering, not joy. Surviving, not thriving. Even though when we really dig, we can find evidence of us always having been there, and happy.

So when I found Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, I was over-the-moon. Stories from all around the world, written by marginalized people, with marginalized characters, all through history.

This anthology—which is criminally out of print now—is absolutely full to the brim of stories with speculative elements (y’all know that’s my favourite) and although yes sometimes those stories have the realism of what the world was like for the marginalized, the overall tone? One of thriving, not surviving. One of being remembered, not hidden. Of being told, not untold.

Such a great collection.

I’ve mentioned Desire & Devour before, earlier this month, but Jeff Mann’s Scottish vampire, Derek Maclaine is a perennial favourite, and many of the stories take place historically. Also Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space), edited by Catherine Lundoff, is full of great pirate tales, some of which are historically set.

#ShortStoryMonth Day Seventeen — “Basketball Fever,” by Maureen Brady

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And the Winner Is…

One of my favourite things to come out of the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival is the yearly fiction competition anthology. Born from the Short Fiction contest, the New Fiction from the Festival anthologies run the range of LGBT characters and cross all manner of genres with the loose theme of “saint” and/or “sinner,” and the result is a collection as varied and as interesting as the festival itself.

I nab the collection every year, and always find some new authors to watch out for, as well as some favourites by authors I already know, and since the contest is judged by a different author every year, the tone of the collections shifts yearly, too.

One example, the 2015 winner, was Maureen Brady’s “Basketball Fever.” These are characters we rarely see, and a love story that isn’t often told. There’s a tendency in romantic stories to focus on the thirty-ish crowd (and younger) and it was so refreshing to see characters older than thirty (or, in this case, older than forty, fifty, and sixty) still being the vibrant individuals they are. I adored it, even as I worried over the current circumstances they were facing.

Other prizes I watch out for are any anthologies that win the Lambda Literary Awards (Transcendent 2, for example); and when announced, the various qualifying stories for the Prix Aurora Awards, because I try to read as many as I can before I lock in my votes for nominations for the award.

What about you? Got any awards you watch out for when it comes to short fiction?

#ShortStoryMonth Day Sixteen — “Bark if You Like Boys,” by Sam Cameron

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Bark!

Short fiction that’s also YA isn’t something I’ve read a lot of, once I sat down to have a think about it, so maybe hit me if you’ve got some I should check out.

That said?

“Bark if You Like Boys” by Sam Cameron is a freaking delight. Found in Boys of Summer, the opening paragraph is perfection in the realm of characterization, and from the first words I was completely in love. Puppy love, even.

Sean Garrity is a young man working in a bookstore over summer (for the record, this is the number one way to make me adore a character) who has been sneaking and reading all the fluffy romance novels with the half-naked Scotsmen on the covers (this is a close second) and who has been trying to find good homes for some puppies he found abandoned outside the bookstore (I refuse to comment as it may serve to later incriminate me).

Sean keeps a notice up on the board that these three puppies need a home, and someone starts leaving him pithy notes in return. When Sean meets two brothers, his gaydar pings and whistles and then goes dark. Mine was like that when I was Sean’s age: unreliable at best.

There’s some sincerely serious topics in this story, but the prose – and Sean’s phenomenal inner voice – keeps the overall tone from slipping into maudlin. There are many types of courage on display in this story, and I loved them all.

Another two anthologies to check out here are OMG Queer! and Speaking Out: LGBTQ Youth Stand Up both of which have a nice range of characterization and tone in the stories.

Got any YA short fic you love?