My writing year's off to a great start
And I finally got around to updating my newsletter banner image to match my website. Better late than never!
BIG NEWS!
I just learned yesterday that both, “Bright Horizons” and “The Life You’ve Given Me, Rusty,” finalists for the BSFA Awards! This is so cool. Members of the British Science Fiction Association can vote for their favorites here. I hope that if you’re among them, you’ll consider my work.
MORE RECENT NEWS
My work has received some nice shoutouts lately.
First up, Ariel Marken Jack reviewed 2022’s, If There’s Anyone Left: Volume 2, in Fusion Fragment’s “From the Archives” section (Issue 23). This includes this lovely review (below) of my story, “Nine Lives.” If you missed the Story Behind this Story in my May 2024 newsletter, you can catch up here.
My non-fiction piece “10 Things Lego Has Taught Me About Story-Building” was mentioned and quoted in an article by Philip Moscovitch published in The Halifax Examiner.
Renan Bernardo recommended my story, “Chief Scavenger’s Log in the Climate Apocalypse” in his newsletter.
A.P. Howell included “Bright Horizons” on her list of stories she enjoyed in 2024.
Alex Brown wrote a really great review of Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 2, which includes my story “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont.”
Speaking of “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont,” this story was first published in the final issue of Fantasy Magazine back in October of 2023. Well, it’s recently been announced that Fantasy is coming back, with Arley Sorg, returning as editor, this time accompanied by co-editor Shingai Kagunda. Fantasy will now be published by Psychopomp, so if you have a keen eye, you might notice the URL has changed if you click on the link for my story.
The difference is that the new version of Fantasy no longer includes an audio podcast (though I am told that’s in the works). For the time being, you can still listen to stories that appeared in the old Fantasy Magazine podcast through wherever you normally get your podcasts. Here are the direct links to two of them, which I’ve also linked on my website’s Short Fiction Bibliography.
AWARD ELIGIBILITY
A reminder that I published six stories in 2024 that are eligible for various awards, two of which are mentioned above. My complete eligibility list with descriptions and links can be found by clicking the button below.
Two of those stories have been climbing up the Nebula Recommended Reading List. SFWA members can read them via the list and all shares and upvotes are appreciated if you enjoy them. These are the same ones now on the BSFA long list.
“Bright Horizons” (Learning to Be Human / Flame Tree)
“The Life You’ve Given Me, Rusty” (Lightspeed)
Locus Award voting opens today, and for this award, anyone on the planet is allowed to vote, so please consider my work if you do.
RECENT FICTION SALES
January was really good to me in terms of short fiction acceptances, with four stories sold. Great way to start the year. I can’t talk about all the details of some of these sales yet, but here’s a little bit on each story:
“Spells for the Afterlife” is a fantasy short story about magic and the bond between sisters.
“The Underlying Cause of Her Insomnia” is a flash horror story involving the possible supernatural cause of one woman’s inability to sleep. This one will be published in The Horror Tree’s Trembling with Fear anthology.
“After the Rain” is a solarpunk story that takes place in a cooperative community whose peaceful way of life is disrupted one day when vandalism is discovered. This one is slated to appear in a dream market of mine that I can’t yet reveal, but I can’t wait to share that with you!
“So Many Things to See” is a sci-fi fantasy story that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s about family and the things we do for those we love.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
My story, “Hard Times at the Four Pines Motel,” about things that go wrong following the invention of teleportation, recently sold to Short Édition and that’s now available to read in Issue 16.
The cool thing about Short Édition is that in addition to having an online magazine, they also have story dispensers worldwide - essentially vending machines for stories. So this is a first in terms of format for my work. If you’re curious, you can find your nearest dispenser here.
So far this story has been well-received. It was even chosen by Adria Bailton for her recommended story of the day on BlueSky, as well as on her Discord. I loved the way Adria described this story, so I thought I’d share it here:
This short read both outlines what happens when tech replaces reliable infrastructure on a personal level, but also holds out hope.
Kind of a reprint in that Dark Matter Ink’s Monstrous Futures anthology, which includes my dark military SF story, “The Body Remembers,” is now available on Audible.
This is an excellent anthology cover-to-cover, and I’m thrilled to see it come out in a format accessible to those who weren’t able to read it in its original form, or for those who simply prefer audiobooks.
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
MORE I’VE BEEN UP TO
This month I’m once again participating in Codex’s Weekend Warrior flash fiction contest, which started mid-January. I’ve already written four new stories. I can’t tell you anything about them since this contest is anonymous, and that might reveal too much too soon, but it’s nice to start the year with some new fiction to send out on submission.
In addition to these, I wrote three more stories. One is a science fiction flash piece with a time element (because if you’ve read my work, you know how I love to play with time). Another is a SF story involving an unusual spaceship. And finally, the third is a horror holiday short (because, again, if you’ve read my work, you know I don’t write your usual holiday story – trust me, this one’s pretty dark). These are all currently doing the submission rounds.
I’m also working on multiple projects of various lengths. Focusing on a short right now that’s intended for a specific submission call, so since that one has a deadline, it takes priority.
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY: “The Life You’ve Given Me, Rusty”
Back in 2018, I had an idea about a human boy who’s raised by a machine. I jotted down some notes about the setting and circumstances, but it wasn’t a story. I just knew I wanted the machines to be the enemy, but at the same time the only family this boy has ever known. How much humanity would he even have left? I wondered. And what would that mean to him?
I set the idea aside and moved on to other more fleshed-out ones.
It wasn’t until 2020 that I went back to it. That year—as in this one—I participated in the Weekend Warrior contest. One of the prompts in the fourth round of that year’s contest was “What’s the new law?” I thought about it for a while, but nothing was coming to me, until for some unexplained reason, my idea from two years earlier came to me. I found myself thinking, what if instead of a law, it was more of a rule? One created to keep the boy safe.
Never cross the stream that divides the wastes and the green land.
I began free-writing this story, first in third-person from the point of view of the boy, but it didn’t feel right. I took another stab at it, this time from the POV of the robot, but still wasn’t happy with it. I believe that in the end, I wound up submitting a version of that first draft to the contest, and it scored okay, though not great, which didn’t surprise me. I knew I had to work on it some more.
I put it aside for a while but eventually went back to it. The characters kept calling to me, which is always a good sign.
This time I rewrote it in second-person. I knew this would make it harder to sell, since the story ended up told in retrospect as the boy reflects on his life with Rusty, but it felt right to me for the first time, so I went with it. If it took a while to find a market, so be it.
It sold on its twenty-first submission, taking a little under three years.
Obviously, there’s some influence here from The Terminator franchise, which I grew up on. But instead of the machines’ goal being to kill or enslave humanity, the problem stems from their programming to care for us. They must protect us at all costs, even from ourselves, and like a nightmare of an overprotective caregiver, they end up limiting humanity to an extent that is unbearable to us and that completely robs us of our freedom. It’s only because Rusty is damaged in a storm that he comes to see things differently.
Before that there were a number of close calls. There were holds from places like Flash Fiction Online, Factor Four, Orion’s Belt, If There’s Anyone Left – Vol. 4, and Small Wonders, with several more personal rejections as well. But no takers.
Then Lightspeed Magazine announced a submission call for science fiction flash stories. To be honest, if I’d had other stories that fit the call, I probably wouldn’t have sent them this one. After so many close calls with no sales, I didn’t really think John Joseph Adams would want my little story. But it was the only thing I had available at that moment, so I sent it in and settled in to wait for the inevitable rejection.
But the rejection never came. Instead, I got an email from JJA saying he loved it and wanted to buy it for Lightspeed. I had to read the email multiple times. I’d been dreaming about selling a story to Lightspeed for years, but for the first few that I was publishing fiction, they weren’t even opening to general submissions. Everything they’d been publishing was either solicited or through a back door only previous contributors had access to. And when they did begin opening to general submissions in 2021, the windows were few and far between.
So when I tell you I was surprised, that’s the understatement of the year. Pretty sure I looked around for Ashton Kutcher to see if I was being Punk’d.
Among other things, this story is an exploration of what it means to be free, and to have autonomy. A theme I also explored in my stories, “Vinyl Wisdom,” “Free,” “Hard Time,” and to some extent in “The Body Remembers.” But it’s also about understanding your privilege and taking action to help those less fortunate.
As it turned out, JJA really did like my little flash piece, which finally got my foot in the door at Lightspeed. I’ve since sold them two more stories that have yet to be published, but that I can’t wait to share with you. So keep an eye out for “Through the Machine” and “Worlds Apart” both coming soon to Lightspeed Magazine.
“The Life You’ve Given Me, Rusty” was originally published in 2024 in Lightspeed Magazine.
Thank you for reading – especially if you’ve subscribed. See you next month! (Click subscribe so you don’t miss it)
P.A. Cornell