Stories

Here are some of the short works of fiction I’ve had published, or that are coming soon.

in audio

• “A Perfect Cup of Tea” at Audible
• “The Morning House” at Podcastle
• “Chameleon” at Podcastle
• “A Thousand Tongues of Silver” at Podcastle
• “The Seven O’Clock Man” at Cabinet of Curiosities
• “The Wedding of Snow, Earth and Salt” at Podcastle
• “The Semaphore Society” at Escape Pod
• “Bonsaiships of Venus” at GlitterShip
• “Traveller, Take Me” at Podcastle
• “Limestone, Lye and the Buzzing of Flies” at Strange Horizons
• “A Pair of Ragged Claws” at Bizarrocast
• “Hairbrush, Socks, Pencils, Orange” at the Independent Writers Podcast

2022

• “A Perfect Cup of Tea”, an Audible Original, about 750 words (six minutes). Tea and resistance. Sept. 5, 2022.
• “The Morning House” in Podcastle, July 5, 2022. Audio and text. 4,600 words. A caregiver for a father with dementia borrows strength from a mirror version of herself.
  • Reviewed in Apex Magazine.
  • Nominated for a World Fantasy Award.
• “And in the Arcade, Ego” in Pulp Literature, issue 33, winter 2022. 4,300 words. Space pinball in a theocratic dystopia.
  • Reprinted in the Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, vol. 1.
• “Lilies and Claws” in Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, published by Third Man Books, Jan. 18, 2022. 6,170 words.
  • Reprinted as the new preface to The Chatelaine, the revised and expanded version of my novel Armed in Her Fashion.

2020

• “In a Hansom Cab at the Liberty Street Ferry Terminal”, in the New Decameron Project, May 2020, 3,000 words. The Age of Innocence with flower magic.
• “Remember Madame Hercules” in On Spec, issue 113, April 2020. 4,600 words. Middle-aged female journalists as superheroes in WWII Montreal.

2019

• “Chameleon” in Daily Science Fiction, Sept. 10, 2019. 900 words. An invisible girl takes the Greyhound bus.
  • Reprinted at Podcastle (audio and print), March 24, 2021. 
• “A Cut-Purse Rethinks His Ways” in Timeworn Issue 1, October 1, 2019. 2,300 words. This is a love story.
• “The Inland Beacon” in Tesseracts Twenty-Two: Alchemy and Artifacts, ed. Lorina Stephens and Susan MacGregor. 3,100 words. A mother and son do their part to fend off the Spanish Armada.
  • Shortlisted for the Sunburst Award.

2018

• “This Season of Waiting” in the Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 24, 2018. A non-speculative, historical Christmas story of about 2,200 words.
• “In Dragonfly Lake” at Kaleidotrope (fall 2018). A house built on resentment cannot stand forever. 900 words.
• “A Threadbare Carpet” in Tesseracts Twenty-One (Sept. 2018) A flying carpet in a dying city. 4,400 words. Now posted on my website.
  • Longlisted for the Sunburst Award.
• “Gilbert Tong’s Life List” in Shades Within Us: Tales of Migration and Fractures Borders (Sept. 8, 2018). A near-future story about climate refugees, set in Manitoba near where I grew up. 4,500 words.
• “A Thousand Tongues of Silver” in Lackingtons Issue 17, Spring 2018. For the “Gothics” issue, a story about Gothic queens and a book. 4,450 words.
  • Audio version at Podcastle in November 2019.
• “Dressed in White Paper” in Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, edited by Colleen Anderson and published by Exile Editions, May 2018. A strange tale inspired by Through the Looking Glass. 3,000 words.
• “Path of White Stones” in Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins, edited by Derek Newman-Stille and published by Exile Editions, December 2018. A story about how certain houses need their crones. About 4,800 words.

2017

• “Not Valid for Spain” in 49th Parallels: Alternative Canadian Histories and Futures, ed. Hayden Trenholm. 2,000 words. Robots in the Spanish Civil War.
  • Longlisted for the Sunburst Award!
• “Something On Your Mind?” a collaborative story with eight other authors, corralled by Gareth D Jones, at Kaleidotrope. Science fiction. 5,500 words.
• “Ad Infinitum” at Daily Science Fiction, June 2, 2017. Rebuilding their ships, rebuilding themselves. Science fiction. 1,200 words.
• “I Know All of His Names” at Liminal Stories. May 1, 2017. Every story needs a monster and I make a very serviceable one. Dark historical fantasy. 2,000 words.

2016

• “The Seven O’Clock Man” in Clockwork Canada. 5,000 words. A mashup of Quebec history and folklore.
  • Reviewed at Tor.com
  • Reviewed at Speculating Canada
  • Longlisted for the Sunburst Awards.
  • Reprinted in Gallery of Curiosities, 2017. Audio version 2019.
• “The Automatic Prime Ministers” in Lackington’s, Issue 10, May 2016. 4,600 words. Science fiction. A thought experiment about policy and humanity.
  • Reviewed at Quick Sip Reviews
  • Reviewed at Nerds of a Feather
• The Course of True Love, a Monstrous Little Voices novella, from Abaddon Books. 20,000 words. One in a series of linked Shakespearean stories by five writers.
  • Reviewed at Fantasy Literarure
  • Reviewed at SF Bluestocking
  • Reviewed at Mortal Words
• “The Wedding of Snow, Earth and Salt” in Podcastle, Jan. 1, 2016. An original story, a short winter fable. Audio only. Eight minutes (750 words) long.
  • Reprinted in Augur Magazine, August 2017.

2015

• “This Is the Humming Hour” in Daily Science Fiction, July 3, 2015. (1,200 words) A whispered request. A saucer of cow’s milk on the windowsill, as bait, as a signal to negotiation. Then a bargain made in a dream: her last, she swears it will be her last.
• “Skullduggers” in Postscripts to Darkness 6. May 2015. (4,150 words) A gothic Canadian story.
• “Isabelle the Stupendous” in Daily Science Fiction, March 3, 2015. (950 words) She had been trying since she was little, and one day she would go up, up, all the way around. It might be today.
• “Limestone, Lye and the Buzzing of Flies” in Strange Horizons, Feb. 16, 2015. (3,950 words) The only one who never broke character was the blacksmith.
  • Reviewed by K. Tempest Bradford in io9 Newsstand Best Stories of the Week
  • Reviewed by Lois Tilton in Locus
  • Reviewed at Quick Sip Reviews
  • Reprinted in Parallel Prairies
• “‘I’m lonely: Immune to Apraxia, Toronto doctor refuses to give up on a cure” in Daily Science Fiction, Jan. 28, 2015. (880 words) Lily Abello thought she would lose her ability to speak in April, just as everyone else she knew did.
  • Reviewed by Olivia Berrier

2014

• “Born on a Glumday” in Daily Science Fiction, Dec. 4, 2014. (900 words) You are a young man; you know everything. But don’t you roll your eyes at me, Makin. I am an old woman. I know everything plus one.
• “Hairbrush, Socks, Pencils, Orange” in Flash Fiction Online, Dec. 1, 2014. (870 words) We didn’t know what reindeer tracks looked like but we knew these were not them.
  • Also available in the FFO anthology from Weightless Books
  • In audio at the Independent Writers Podcast
• “Bonsaiships of Venus” in Lackington’s issue 4 (1,500 words)  In Venus’s thick atmosphere, floating was as easy as dying.
  • Reviewed by Amal El-Mohtar at Tor.com
  • Reviewed by Derek Newman-Stille at Speculating Canada
  • In audio, read by Keffy Kehrli, at GlitterShip, July 2015.
  • Reprinted in GlitterShip Year One: Kindle and paperback.
• “The Semaphore Society” in Crossed Genres, “Typical” issue, Sept. 1, 2014. (3,000 words) The blinking pattern that pulls up her eye-tracking software is a lot like the blinking that stops tears.
  • Reviewed by K. Tempest Bradford in io9 Newsstand Best Stories of the Week
  • Reviewed by Charlotte Ashley at Apex
  • Reprinted in Escape Pod, text and audio, narrated by Christiana Ellis, December 2015
  • Reviewed by David Steffen at SF Signal.
• “Traveller, Take Me” in On Spec, Summer 2014. (3,780 words) Prospectors, submersibles, Manitoban small towns, ghosts, science fiction books and the beginning of the First World War.
  • Reviewed in Locus.
  • Audio version in Podcastle, April 2015. Narrated by Wilson Fowlie.
• “Their Dead So Near” in Issue 1 of Lackington’s, Feb. 13, 2014. (1,550 words) Ottawa’s boneyards are temporary, their residents transient.
  • Reviewed in Speculating Canada.

2013

• “The Dentist’s Apprentice”  in the Winter 2013 issue of Spellbound. (2,000 words) These footsteps rattled the windows. These footsteps meant trouble.
• “Six Aspects of Cath Baduma” in Postscripts to Darkness 4, Oct. 2013. (3,900 words) Whenever we got a new job, Cath would eat ribs. Pork ribs, probably, but with Cath Baduma, it didn’t do to assume…
  • Reprinted in Murder Mayhem Short Stories from Flametree Press, 2016.
• “For Sale by Owner” in Daily Science Fiction, Aug. 2. 2013. (3,600 words) The house on the cliff is free but it comes with a price.
  • Reviewed in Diabolical Plots
  • Honourable Mention in Imaginarium 3: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing
• “Word for Word” in Waylines Magazine, Issue 3, May 2013. (1,760 words) What if we could unsay the things we regret saying? 
  • Honourable Mention in Imaginarium 3: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing
• “A Pair of Ragged Claws” in Black Treacle, issue 2, April 2013. (2,750 words) What the Ottawa nightclub Zaphod Beeblebrox might have been like in the early 1990s if the bands included giant sentient scorpions.
  • On Black Treacle’s top five list for 2013.
  • Audio version published in Bizarrocast, March 2014

2012

• “We Take Care of Our Own” in Blood and Water, edited by Hayden Trenholm, from Bundoran Press, August 2012. (4,770 words) Available in print or as an e-book. In 2041, a Canadian woman risks her business and her relationship with her teenage son to smuggle food over the American border.

before that

• “152” in Departures (chapbook anthology, above/ground press, June 2008)
• “Bleach” in The Puritan, fall 2007
• “Antipode” in In Our Own Words, vol. 6 (anthology), 2005
• “Skin” in Slow Trains (online), fall 2004
• “Fog” in The New Quarterly, winter 2004
• “Pigeons” in Another Toronto Quarterly (online), fall 2003