Award Eligibility 2021

2020 as a whole was substantially subpar. However, I did sell my first six stories (four of which were published this year in FIYAH, Anathema, Midnight & Indigo, and Syntax & Salt; two of which will appear in 2021 in Fireside and Clarkesworld). I am a grateful, awkward, eyebrow-waggling, shoulder-shimmying lump of meat and bone. And on that fleshy note, here are the stories! If you enjoy them, please tug and dump them into various lil awards nomination buckets. They are eligible for Hugo and Nebula short story awards, and I myself (let eyebrow-waggling commence) am eligible for an Astounding Award (great name).

You Without Me | Midnight & Indigo

2,300 words

"What you do is not so different from what anyone does. You root in someone else. This is how you stay. You live without flesh, but you do not live without love."

This story is what you get when you try to write about you and your sister's trauma and entanglement, and naturally one of you winds up a ghost-demon. Because, sisters, amirite? You can read the full story here (Warning/delight: you have to order the whole book: 22 deliciously spooky stories!).

The Black Menagerie | FIYAH

6,950 words

"The woman in San Francisco is both long in the tooth and broad in the shoulder; is brown as a long summer, and strong. And though the phrase long in tooth means she is old, there is also something about her teeth. Something about how they flash when she bears them against the men who grab at her as she walks through the hills of this new city at night.

Black! Witchy! Queers! What happens when a witch who likes to set things free and a storyteller with a compulsion to control fall into mutual infatuation? Stuff! Stuff happens. You can read the full story here (Same warning/delight as above. But rly, if you don't already subscribe to FIYAH, what is you even doing?!)

Thunder Only Happens When It's Raining | Anathema

4,050 words

"I heave the mattress up and the cloud is there, pressed flat against the box spring. It looks like a drawing of a cloud before it puffs back open, just like a balloon blowing itself up. It floats up and out and hovers right by my face. It’s crackling and spinning and more cotton than vapour, lively as lightning. Buzzing like an insect, like vibrating wings. I wonder where to put it. Then I open my mouth and it flies right in. I chew and it’s like chewing tin foil. I swallow and it’s like swallowing smoke."

More siblings! Stick three kids in a house, remove the parents, add late-summer ennui in New England, and give one or more of them some supernatural powers. Ta-da! You can read the full story here.

A Good Mother | Syntax & Salt

2,800 words

"Around this time, I notice that she is growing. And changing. Most days she still looks like me. Brown and small and endlessly grimey. Some days she looks like my mom at her age. Straight black hair cut in a circle around her face, solemn mouth, downcast eyes, hands twisted behind her back. Some days she looks like no one I know, her face shifting and amorphous, sometimes brown, sometimes pale peach, sometimes short, sometimes a gray mound hulking over me, wrapped in winding sheets."

WWYD if your mom showed up in your house one day as your child? You can read the full story here.

And that's all, folks! Thank you for stopping by. I'll leave you with this photo that I took while driving across country this December. The Mojave Desert at 5AM in winter is beautiful. Remember to seek beauty, awe, cold, dark.