Category Archives: Free Fiction

A Few of My Favorite Things

If you’re new to my writing or if you’d like to get an overview of my style very quickly, these are the recently-published works that I think will give you the best introduction. Of course, writing evolves, and my style has changed slightly from where I was last year. Grown, I’d like to think. The new stories I’m writing now are a little different, but the bones of them are here in these pieces:

And a bit from my story, “CL3ANS3″, which sold to the anthology ELDRITCH CHROME, forthcoming from Chaosium:

“I think that means you’re supposed to have both,” she said. Marc looked at his monitor and then shrugged, letting his arm drop to the table. “How would you like your edibles prepared?”

“Sticky,” he answered, and the handler frowned.

“That’s not a texture we offer,” she told him. “How about a steamed purple, with a tall glass of orange shake?” Marc nodded apathetically, and she went to get our orders.

“Are you feeling sick?” I asked him.

“I feel dirty,” he answered. “I’ve been processing the same group of files for days, I don’t understand most of it.” He shrugged. “A cache of data from an old college. I work academic files all of the time, I volunteered to take this assignment.”

A handsome boy delivered glasses of chilled water to our table, singing out, “Hydration!” as he slid one in front of each of us. They were always lovely, the ones who served our food and smiled as they took our coats.

I watched him walk away as Marc sighed heavily.

“You do look feverish,” Hassa said, concerned. “You’re sweating.”

“You should notify medical,” Elda added.

“Yes, I think …” Marc paused, putting a hand to his forehead. “I think I’ll go there now.” He lurched to his feet and left, bumping into our handler as he passed her. She looked shaken but managed to get our meal on the table in the right order. Her long hair was brushed straight and bound behind her head with a black bow. I thought about my own hair, cropped close to my head, the way it had been for years. Data processor chic; we all wore it this way.

Free Fiction: Annabelle Tree

This story was originally published last year in Southern Fried Weirdness: Reconstruction, an anthology to benefit tornado relief (click on the link to buy it).

Annabelle Tree

The tree grew up around her as she sat at its base, day after day. It had been a sapling when her parents bought the house by the creek, and it made the perfect backrest for Annabelle-the-child. She sat very still, her chubby three-year-old hands clasped together, arms tight around her knees, as her father sat alone on the creek bank. He waited for a fish to appear on his line, and she waited with him.

“I don’t want you sitting all day out on the ground,” her momma had said after the second day faded into evening and Annabelle once again walked into the kitchen with a dirty bottom.

“Yes, Momma,” she’d replied quietly as her momma brushed her off with a hand broom and quick, hard strokes. Her momma sighed.

“There’s no use. That dress is ruined.” Annabelle was given a hot bath, a cold supper, and sent to bed without a story. She wrapped her arms around Mr. Bunny and listened to her parents’ raised voices float up through the floor boards until she fell asleep. The next day Daddy couldn’t fish because he had to work on the house, as it was “in no fit state for people to see,” Annabelle’s momma had said, and there were church people that wanted to come over for a house warming. Annabelle liked the church people, who’d come over to their old apartment with ambrosia salad and fried chicken and Mrs. Cramble, who wore flower print dresses and had thick, soft arms, would give her great big hugs and extra helpings on her plate, and Momma never complained. Annabelle followed her Daddy around all afternoon, holding the tin bucket with his hammer and nails in it, and when he needed one or the other, she’d lift it up as high as she could, and he’d reach down into the bucket and take what he needed. Sometimes he’d smile at her too. Continue reading →

Read, Free: On the Methods of Preserving and Dissecting Icthyo Sapiens

This flash fiction piece appears in Static Movement’s new Monster Gallery anthology, which is now available for sale. Read it here, and if you like it, please consider purchasing the anthology (which has many other great flash pieces, all about the monsters we know, and the ones we think we know).

On the Methods of Preserving and Dissecting Icthyo Sapiens
By Carrie Cuinn

Lab Notes, April 23, 1931. The subject has four limbs, but while its skin appears crocodilian, the limbs are not fixed under the body. Instead they appear to be jointed much as a man’s are, with longer back legs and a wide range of motion in the shorter front legs.

Water is everywhere. It is, always, since the earliest memories of my life. I feel it as a warm pressure on every part of my skin. It is an ever-moving source of air for my lungs and food for my belly. When the currents are strong it becomes thick enough to sit on, to grab a hold of and ride. The water is never still because it is never empty. I can taste the time of day.

Though it has a mouth and front facing eyes, it does not appear to breathe air, and instead has several gills hidden under heavy scales on its neck which are easy to miss. Kudos to Johnson for noticing them, or the thing might have drowned before we got its head and neck into a bucket of water.

Continue reading →

Free Story Online, and a New Podcast to Download

My most recent publication,“Call Center Blues,” is now available to read, free, online at Daily Science Fiction. It’s short, fun, science fiction. And did I mention there are robots in it?

Also, this week’s SF Signal podcast is up, and you can hear it now:

SF Signal #90, Time Travel, with me, John DeNardo, Derek Johnson, Gail Carringer, Paul Weimer and Patrick Hester.

A Story and Two Podcasts (online now)

Right now you can find me in a few different places:

“Monsters, Monsters, Everywhere” is now available to read (free!) online at Crossed Genres in Issue #34 (MONSTERS), out October 1, 2011.

And SF Signal has graciously let me take part in their last two podcasts:

SF Signal #82, Science Fiction Movies, with Lisa Paitz Spindler, Scott Cupp, Derek Johnson, Jessica Strider, and Patrick Hester.  (posted Oct 3, 2011)

SF Signal #80, Near-Future Science Fiction, with Jeff Patterson, Fred Kiesche, John Stevens and Patrick Hester (posted Sep 26, 2011)

I won’t be on the SF Signal podcasts every week but I should be in one or two a month for the foreseeable future, and thanks for listening!