Published Fiction

Short Stories

anathema issue #12

May 2021: “To Rise, Blown Open” (short story) • Anathema: Spec from the Margins 

“You should know: when Calamity sundered the skies, I was minding my business. Loading groceries into the car; rock-paper-scissoring with Mr. Marvelous and Watrella, to see who’d drive home. Mundanity. Polyamorous domesticity. All the stuff you’d encouraged me to do, while on so-called sabbatical these months. 

Now, the sky is breaking.”

Reviews: Quick Sip

April 2021: “Bandit, Reaper, Yours” (flash) • Baffling Magazine

“One hardly expects to be bested by a boutique. Especially not by some spongy wooden hovel, swollen from storms pummeling the Citadel’s bay. Yet, the reaper Retwa is unmade, stripped like fresh carrion, every time she spots it.”

Reviews: Quick Sip • The Book Smugglers

October 2020: “Conjurer’s Rites” (flash) • Breathe FIYAH, Tor.com

“I should know how to spell a Graves family gathering by now.

‘Once . . . th-there was . . .” I pause, chewing my heartbeat. Fashionable relatives, peppered throughout the Hilton’s stately ballroom, stare on. Unimpressed. Skeptical. “Once,” I repeat, louder, “there was a housekeeper who—’”

Reviews: Locus “Recommended Story,” February 2021 • Quick Sip

When a breeze shook the reed curtains in mama’s salon, I thought it might be another dragon gliding low, stopping to drink from Lake Mritil. ‘Course, mama and I weren’t afraid; we loved watching them soar overhead, wings gusting hard enough to free cotton fibers and coffee cherries across Gyrixëan farms, so that croppers only had to scoop them up. So, you can imagine my disappointment when it wasn’t a dragon aloft, but a lanky huntress pushing into mama’s parlor. She burst through our straw door, letting in the noon sound of Gyrixëans haggling over pouches in the nearby spice house; testing winter tunics in the adjacent tailor’s gallery — but this wasn’t any old villager, like the rest of them. Her wolf-pelt cloak, engraved walking staff, and curved daggers marked her as a traveler. And instead of looking journey-weary, her umber skin practically glowed beneath the gauzy afternoon light.
July 2020: “While Dragons Claim the Sky” (novelette; reprint) •  PodCastle, episodes #635 &  #636
Reviews: Fantasy Literature

FIYAH_Issue10_Cover

April 2019: “While Dragons Claim the Sky” (novelette) • FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, issue 10.

“When a breeze shook the reed curtains in mama’s salon, I thought it might be another dragon gliding low, stopping to drink from Lake Mritil. ‘Course, mama and I weren’t afraid; we loved watching them soar overhead, wings gusting hard enough to free cotton fibers and coffee cherries across Gyrixëan farms, so that croppers only had to scoop them up.”

Reviews:
The Book Smugglers • B&N SFF Roundup, April 2019 • Quick Sip
Lists:
Locus 2019 Recommended Reading List • Maria Haskins Best of 2019
Awards:
2020 “Best Novelette” finalist, Ignyte Award
2019 “Big Sip” for “Excellent Action in Short SFF”