Category Archives: Free Fiction

08.12.16
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FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE #2: Diplomatic Relations With Angry Rabbits

I recently asked people on Twitter and Facebook for random writing prompts, and from those, I wrote five micro and flash fiction stories to share here on my site. The others are:

This story is courtesy of Leeman Kessler, who suggested the first line of the story. I wrote the rest, for a total of 1200 words — the longest “flash” story I wrote this week — posted below.

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Diplomatic Relations With Angry Rabbits

“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Mayor, but the rabbits are back.” At least Siobhan was kind enough to look sympathetic when she said it.

Evan Mikumba smiled slightly. “Thank you,” he said. “You may send them in.” She nodded and left.

Easy for her to feel sorry for me, he thought. She doesn’t have to find a way for us to live together. He shuffled random papers on his table, trying to put the thought out of his head. He didn’t have any proof that the rabbits could read his mind, but they had an uncanny ability to discern the mood of the humans around them. Evan didn’t want his city to end up like that village, Oswald, that collapsed a few miles away.

This group of rabbits had made contact with them, first.

Evan focused on his mental list: Easter bunnies, Beatrix Potter bunnies, Pat the Bunny… He took a deep breath, and forced himself to relax.

They padded in softly, the rabbit envoy and her brood-staff, on all fours. They moved with a jerky, jumping motion that Evan carefully avoided thinking of as a ‘hop’. It was only when he stood up that the rabbits, taking their places in the room, sat back on their heels.

Evan walked around the desk, putting his hand out. “Envoy,” he said as a greeting. She put out her paw, and he shook it, once. Her huge white muzzle came to just below his chin, but the tops of her stiff ears were over his head. She watched him with enormous orange eyes.

Velveteen Bunny, Guess How Much I Love You?

“What I can do for you?” he asked.

“We agree to dig our warrens deeper,”she replied, her voice so high-pitched it hurt his ears. “No more of your buildings will collapse.”

“Wonderful! Our engineers can help-”

“Not needed,” the Envoy said, cutting him off. “We know the earth.”

“Of course,” he said. “You’re right. Thank you.”

The Envoy’s furry face was impossible to decipher. Her whiskers twitched.

“Your food offering is not acceptable,” she said. “We need more, to make peace.” One ear flicked, and from behind her, a slightly smaller, brown-haired rabbit stepped forward.

“We need food for fifty mouths more,” it said. Evan couldn’t guess at its gender. “We visit the amount again in one year.” He wondered at its color. Is this what ‘nut brown’ means? Out loud, he said, “I can get the council to agree to that, if you will fill in the tunnels by the end of the month. We have houses and businesses, whole blocks closed off. My people need to go home.”

“Yes. There is more.” The Envoy looked at him, unblinking, for a long moment. “We also needed the Elgin.”

Evan was startled. He took a step back. “What?”

“The Elgin man. We took him, to make peace.”

“I told you that Doctor Clark is an old man. We agreed that we weren’t going to turn him over. How did you get to him?”

“We took the house. From below.”

Evan jumped, startled. The largest rabbit in the back of the room, a monstrosity of muscle under black and white spotted fur, stepped forward, teeth bared.

“The Elgin, for peace,” the Envoy repeated without flinching. “You were given time to provide him. Decide now if you want peace to continue.” Without waiting for an answer, she flicked her ears, signaling the other rabbits, who dropped to all fours and filed out of Evan’s office.

Evan waited. Siobhan came in a minute later, and shut the door behind her. “They’re gone,” she said quietly. “What did they want?”

“Nothing much,” he lied. “Get Sheriff Lee and that professor from the university on the phone. Have them meet me up the quarry in 30 minutes.”

“Why do you need them, Mr. Mikumba?” Siobhan was obviously worried – her brows were furrowed and her pale blue eyes were tearing up. “My uncle was Oswald. Are we safe here?”

“It’s fine, Siobhan. We just need to organize the food for the rabbits, and we’re looking at the quarry for storage.” He moved closer to her, putting one hand firmly on each of her shoulders. “This is all going to work out.” He grabbed his coat from the back of his chair, and left.

At the quarry, Evan stood by the edge, looking down in the brackish water far below. Behind him, he heard cars approaching on the gravel road. The cars stopped; doors opened and shut.

I liked Bunnicula, Evan thought. I really did.

“What’s this about, Mikumba?” Sheriff Lee called out. Evan turned around. Lee wasn’t a big man, but his thick Texas accent and oversized swagger made him seem larger. Next to him, Dr. Kessler seemed too tall, too lanky, too pale for a man who’d lived a decade under the southern sun.

Evan explained his meeting. Lee swore at regular intervals, a colorful mix of Korean words and good ol’ boy phrases that Evan had asked him, more than once, not to use in public. Kessler was silent until Evan finished.

“I can tell you there’s no way to safely exterminate these animals,” Kessler said. “Clark tried, for decades. Explosives, electricity, fire. He was never been able to get them all.”

“What about chemicals?” Evan asked. Kessler shrugged.

“Hormones caused this in the first place. Clark kept experimenting on them, made them smaller, but accidentally made them a lot smarter, too. They evolved vocal chords. It’s, it’s…” he moved his hands in the air wildly. “It’s impossible, and yet, here they are. Creating a government and making demands.”

“I’ve been tellin’ ya it ain’t no accident they burrowed under the city,” Lee said. “They had a plan all along.”

“My studies would lead me to agree with the Sheriff,” Kessler said. “The seismic team hasn’t been able to radar every inch of the warren, so it likely extends far beyond what we’re estimating, as well. I’ve gotten reports that some of those tunnels come up higher under strategically placed targets. If we don’t comply…”

“The city falls down,” Lee finished for him. Kessler shrugged again.

“Exactly.”

“What about the National Guard?” Kessler asked. “I haven’t seen them since they rolled out last month.”

“They were recalled,” Lee told him. “President won’t send the Army against talking rabbits. He’s considering a ‘diplomatic solution’, he says. As if my 12 gauge ain’t diplomatic.”

“Didn’t some of your deputies already try that?”

“Well, I told ’em not to, but yeah, a couple of the stupid ones went off on their own. Didn’t none come back.”

“If we can’t fight them, we need to appeal to them,” Evan said. “We can’t allow them to just take man for whatever kind of justice rabbits come up with.”

“Oh, I think Clark is gone already,” Kessler said. “Rabbits fight to the death, and eat the loser. It’s, uh, really quite violent.”

“Bunnies are supposed to be cute,” Lee said, shaking his head. “I had a pet bunny as a kid. Loved that thing.” He sighed.

Guess How Much I Love You? Evan thought.

“What choice do we have? I’ve decided: we work together,” he said aloud. “For peace.”

08.11.16
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Flash Fiction Challenge #1: “Visitation of Irba”

I recently asked people on Twitter and Facebook for random writing prompts, and from those, I wrote five micro and flash fiction stories to share here on my site. The others are:

This story is courtesy of Paul Michael Anderson, who suggested a story with an orphan and an old man, using the Christ story. All in a flash length piece of fiction. (No pressure, right?) That idea resulted in 1185 words — the top of what’s usually considered “flash” — posted below.

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Visitation of Irba

“It’s hot,” Dominik said, pulling at the sweat-damp fabric of his shirt with his slender fingers. “I don’t like it out here.” The little boy sighed then, a long breath that seemed to pull his whole body down as he exhaled. “It’s been all day already,” he said.

“It’s my birthday,” he added hopefully, after a while.

“Of course it is, little bunny,” the old man replied. He was the only other person Dominik could see, in any direction. “That’s why we’re here.”

Dominik looked around. “The sun is setting, though.”

“I’m sorry,” the old man said. “I thought it would be sooner, but we need to wait for it to happen.” He opened a pocket on his faded grey jacket. “I have saved this for you,” he said as he handed over an orange lollipop, still in a wrapper. “It is the last one, so take your time.”

“The last one ever, Grandpa?”

“Maybe,” the man said. “I hope not. Orange is my favorite flavor.”

“Mine, too.” Dominik unwrapped it carefully, handing over the torn plastic. His grandfather tucked the wrapper into his pocket, hand trembling slightly.

“Tell me about that one,” Dominik said, pointing at his grandfather’s chest before plopping the candy into his mouth. A faint breeze kicked up dust at their feet.

“It’s when they made me a general.”

“And that one?” Dominik asked around a mouthful of lollipop, pointing at a different medal.

“That was for living.”

“You get a medal for living?”

“You do when you’re the only one,” his grandfather said quietly. After a moment of silence, he added, “It was for Volgograd. For the battles.”

“I remember that one. The smoke blacked out the sun.”

“Volgograd was lost before you were born. You’re thinking of when Leninsk fell.”

“Oh.”

The air stilled, hot and dry.

After a while, Dominik took the lollipop stick from his mouth, slightly chewed. He rolled it between his fingers, back and forth. The old man took a worn handkerchief from his pants pocket and dabbed at his brow, watching the child, but saying nothing. Eventually, Dominik put his hand out, holding the stick above the hardened dirt. He looked at his grandfather.

“Why does it matter if we drop our trash?” Dominik asked, not for the first time. He hadn’t let go of the stick, though.

“You know why.” Dominik didn’t speak. “Fine,” the man said, “you will hear it again. We’ve destroyed enough of this world. The cities are gone. Even villages like what used to be here, are gone. Your parents – my daughter Marya – all gone.” The man coughed, a tiny sound, quickly muffled when he put the handkerchief to his mouth.

When he took it away, Dominik could see spots of red on it. “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” he said. He put the lollipop stick into the pocket of his shorts, and made a show of patting his pocket. “There. It won’t fall out.” He smiled, the first time in hours.

“I need you to be a good boy,” the man said, “because I was not.” He picked up the bottle at his feet, and shook it. Only a little water remained, sloshing around the bottom.

Dominik looked at the bottle thirstily, but didn’t reach for it. Instead, he asked, “Will you tell me a story? From when you were my age?”

The man placed the bottle into Dominik’s hands, gently pushing it toward him. As the boy gulped down the last of the water, a distant rumble grew closer. The ground trembled beneath their feet, and then stopped. Dominik looked all around in a panic, but his grandfather put a hand on his shoulder.

“When I was exactly your age,” he said, “I lived in the village this used to be. We called it Irba. The stone we sit on used to be the wall of the church where I was baptized.” He coughed again – Dominik grabbed his arm, but his grandfather gently waved him off. “I am fine, little bunny. Everything will be good again soon.” But he looked older than he had that morning, and in the places where he wasn’t red from the sun, his skin was gray.

“I was a happy child,” the man continued. “I loved being here with my mother. Her name was Marya, too.”

Dominik made a face. “I don’t remember her.”

“My mother died before you were born.”

“No,” Dominik said quietly. “I don’t remember my mother. Maybe, but I’m not sure.”

The old man took the child into his arms then, holding him stiffly, without saying anything for several minutes. When he spoke, his voice cracked.

“My father died before I was born, so all of my early happiness was due to my mother. She was a saint, and she loved me. But when she married my step-father, Josef, all of my days were joy. He loved us both, and made certain we knew it.”

Something black streaked overhead, falling impossibly fast at the earth before them, trailing smoke. It crashed, throwing up debris and noise and a hot wind that rushed through the scraggly trees and blew dust into their faces. Dominik cried out, and buried his face in his grandfather’s jacket.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” the man said softly. “It’s far away. Now listen, quick, listen – the day is almost over, so it’s going to happen soon, the reason we’re here.” He coughed, hard, then continued. “When I was exactly your age, an angel came to me. An angel, Dominik! It was glorious.”

The boy looked up, tears making his dirty face. “Here?”

“Yes, right here. This exact spot. It came to me and offered me a path to heaven. A chance to be righteous and good, to heal the world.” The old man, older now, older than Dominik had ever seen him, his eyes wet, stared directly out in front of them. “I was foolish, though. I wanted to be a carpenter like my step-father. I didn’t want my mother to see me as anything but her little boy. I said no.

“I said no, and the world died.”

Dominik jumped up suddenly, pointing at a distant figure at the edge of the treeline, too far away to make out. “Who is that?”

His grandfather squinted. “I do not know. It doesn’t matter, the sun is setting, look!” Dominik could see the sky had become orange, the color of dusk, the color of candy. “It will be any moment now, Dominik, please!” The old man grabbed the child by the shoulders, turning him around.

In the distance, the one figure had become many.

“You can say yes. You can be better than I was.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“You won’t. You won’t! I will always be with you. But you can fix all of this. You can save us.”

The boy was crying hard now. Far away, the figures could be heard shouting, indistinguishable sounds growing closer.

“The angel will come. Don’t be scared. Any moment now, the angel will come.”

Dominik nodded. “Because it’s my birthday, right grandfather?”

The old man hugged him tight.

06.16.16
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Poem: Ephyra

EPHYRA

Dressed in darkness, I tumble into dawn
To run salt-scented, empty asphalt
Space my neighbors have abandoned
Since streetlamps, transfigured
Hatched airborne jellies, now
Untethered, slowly drifting past
Sporadic bioluminscence:
An ocean’s liberated dream

Close to these shy miracles, I
Regret my awkward novice stride
And that I slept while they were born
Now icy puddles splash bare feet
Knees ache carrying my weight
Skin sweats, chaps, and chafes –
But above me, floating free,
Those silent creatures light my way.

– Carrie Cuinn

Continue reading →

02.02.16
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First reviews of my latest story, “That Lucky Old Sun”

In January, Apex Magazine published my short story, “That Lucky Old Sun”, to my great delight. You can read it online for free, here. (You can also buy the whole issue for Kindle here.) If you haven’t read it yet, be warned that there are minor spoilers below.

I was nervous before “That Lucky Old Sun” came out; it’s the longest short story I’ve published to date, and it plays with an old SF trope in a way that readers might either love, or hate, or not notice at all. You can never tell until a story ends up in the world and out of your hands. I was more nervous because this story is important to me. They all are, of course, though some of what I write is fun, some is dark, some is about projecting the future – I’m usually pushing at the edges of what I can do in a story, but the boundaries I’m pushing aren’t always the same.

In classic, golden age SF, we have these grand stories about building rockets, escaping doomed worlds, blasting off into space with limitless potential in front of us. I could write that again a hundred times, and who would question it? We know that tale. We’ve all read it. With this story, I wanted to talk about the people who get left behind. Not the rocket scientists or astronauts or the child looking out the porthole at a dwindling blue marble that used to be his home. Just regular, everyday people. Families. Neighbors. Small town folks, faced with things much bigger than themselves.

I am so happy with how it’s been received.

Amelia Crowly said:

This really gave me chills.
I love the way it *seems* to set the scene at once, only to become darker and more intriguing as the story progressed.

On Twitter, @robertired said:

It’s amazing. Subverting old school sci-fi is something that should be done more. Congratulations.

@ScottMBeggs said:

Beautiful short story from (via ). Uses the familiar to deliver the unexpected.

@MariaHaskins called it:

Wonderful, creeping-up-on-you #scifi

And @LaurenLykke said:

Just read and LOVED your story in !! Got me all teary-eyed!

Over at Tangent Online, Kevin P. Halett said:

Carrie’s “end of the world” science fiction story is time and world ambiguous, telling this often-told story from a new perspective. The protagonist is a small girl, innocuously spending what could be her last day with her loving mother, who knows what’s coming. The author touchingly portrays the mother’s loving patience and the girl’s innocence in this easy to read tale.

Telling the story from the little girl’s perspective made it darker and more compelling. I found the writing engaging from the very beginning and it continued to hold me even though I could guess where it might end; a pleasing new variation on an old theme.

Lastly, and with the most spoilers… At Quick Sip Reviews, Charles Payseur said:

………….okay then. Yeah, this story is a bit dark, a bit…well, a bit very dark, about a child, Melanie, and her mother as they sort-of wait for the end of the world. The setting is vaguely futuristic and also rather dystopian, a place where people are judged based on their skin but not exactly the way that they are now. Here it’s not exactly race it seems but something in the blood that changes the skin’s color and might do other things to it. Whatever the case, it means that there are vast systems in place to try and “contain” it, mostly by reporting on neighbors and living in a police state and it’s an all around not-good scene. And yet the “problem” persists and so the government decided to just bomb everything. Bomb it all and then return to reclaim the wiped slate. And that the story follows a mother and her daughter on this day is bleak as fuck, but also I rather enjoyed it. There is something to be said about this, that this is where fascism leads, that this is where intolerance and bigotry lead. That there are “understanding” people who are just part of the problem and that everything is built on hate without reason, hate because that’s all it is, and in the end it tears everything apart, tears families apart and lets the central lie of the story fester and burn like the fires of the bombs being dropped. Because a large part of the story is the absence of the father, who is “pure” and who has the chance to survive. It’s a wrenching story and a sad one, very much worth reading but maybe prepare some cat videos for the aftermath. Indeed.

06.23.14
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New Lakeside, New Publication, and Readercon

We launched the second issue of Lakeside Circus over the weekend with a brief Letter From The Editor, followed by the outstanding short story by Fran Wilde, “The Naturalist Composes His Rebuttal”. We paired it with a podcast — our first — read by Don Pizarro, who’s not only contributed a story to this issue but has been working tirelessly with me as our audio producer.

Fran said, “Bravo, Don BRAVO. This sounds exactly as I’d imagined it,” so take a moment and listen to it here.

You can see the full issue Table of Contents and publishing schedule here, along with links to subscription options. Please do consider subscribing if you haven’t yet; the more readers we have, the more podcasts and stories I’ll be able to fund.

—

My story, “How to Recover a Relative Lost During Transmitter Shipping, In Five Easy Steps“, is now online at Unlikely Story, for their Cartography special issue. Though it is technically about a map, for me the story is more about the idea of a map as a description of the places you’ve been along the way to where you’re going. The map you draw for others isn’t always accurate, even though you may think it is. The path is bent as you react to obstacles along the way, or filled in from hazy memories and half-guesses. Looking back, you’re tempted to see the past as the whole of the map, when it’s only your perspective on display. It may be true. It might not.

“How to Recover a Relative Lost During Transmitter Shipping, In Five Easy Steps” is told as an interview with a woman who accidentally became part of something enormous, when she thought she’d lost someone whose impact was only enormous to her. Here’s an excerpt:

Interviewer’s note: Amrita Chakrabarty agreed to this meeting only after several concessions were agreed to. First, that we wouldn’t discuss the contentious court battle she and her family had only recently settled; second, that we wouldn’t discuss the theoretical science in more than a passing way, as it applied to the events themselves; and third, that I didn’t ask about her relationship with her younger brother, Shikhar, beyond what she was willing to disclose on her own. The reader, no doubt already familiar with the hundreds of other articles on what’s now called “The Chakrabarty Wormhole Map,” can piece together for themselves why that might be the case.

Q: Let’s go back to the very beginning. What was your first hint that your brother and his friends had done something monumental?

AC: Nothing feels monumental until after it’s over and you realize what’s happened. This thing, which is so huge and impossible to escape now, was annoying to begin with. Frustrating, and then scary, but looking back, I can see why it’s been painted as something of an adventure. That sounds fun, right? A grand escapade.

The title of your book, which comes from the first set of instructions you wrote, makes it sound simple.

Yeah, that was a marketing thing. It wasn’t simple at all.

—

You can read the rest of the issue here. It also includes work from Sarah Pinsker, Rhonda Eikamp, Kat Howard, James Van Pelt, and Shira Lipkin.

—

I don’t have the schedule yet, but I’ll be on a panel at Readercon discussing imaginary cities and invented cartography, along with other folks from the Unlikely Story issue. Last version of the description I read was:

This summer, Unlikely Story will publish their Unlikely Cartography issue, featuring stories by Shira Lipkin, Kat Howard, Sarah Pinsker, Carrie Cuinn, and others. Together with editor A.C. Wise, these authors will discuss their stories, and other authors (historical and modern) who similarly explored the cartography of the fantastic. Influences and discussion topics may include Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Eco’s Legendary Lands, Post’s Atlas of Fantasy, Mieville’s The City and the City, and more.

I can’t wait!

—

Coming back around to Lakeside Circus again: I’ve update the website to include a main page button for podcasts (like we already had for short stories, flash fiction, and poetry), included the Issue Two information, and added rotating news posts to share important information on the front page. We’re keeping the design simple to translate well to your mobile devices, but still want it to be useful, easy to navigate, and aesthetically pleasing. Take a look?

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11.05.13
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My story, “On the Methods of Preserving and Dissecting Icthyo Sapiens” is now live at Mad Scientist Journal

My favorite bit of mad science fiction is free to read online, along with a perfect illustration by Shannon Legler. From my story:

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.

…

Read the rest here.

08.14.13
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Little Bits

For a variety of reasons, I’ve written several tiny stories in the last two months. Mostly they’re nothing I’m going to use, but a few are seeds from which I will (or have) revised into longer works. Here are a few of them:

From the poetry workshop at Readercon
(assignment, write a poem in 10 minutes)

Don’t dress me in a frock of finest lace
Don’t lock me in a tower far from here
Don’t cover me with veils to hide my face
Don’t burn me at the stake to quench your fear

Don’t wed me to the wizard from the East
Don’t wed me to the knight who makes the quest
Don’t feed to the monster like a feast.
Don’t think that you can write my story best.

This too is my land, now bleak and barren.
These too are my people, tired and sore.

Give me your leave to ride out with the men
I’m not your little princess any more.

(I like sonnets.)

From Codex, a two-line story

Each night she wrote out her fears, watching gruesome shapes coalesce into existence as she typed the words describing their attributes and evils. Then, that monster nearly flesh, she deleted the whole thing: story, words, letters, monster, fears… and finally felt safe enough to sleep.

From my writing workshop, samples to show my students

Valentine stole this day from the werewolves, so I stole it back. Ignore the pain and blood–February’s full moon will wash that bite away.

(140 character fiction)

She made it snow for a week, until her anger subsided. Guilt set in, and she retreated to bed, crawled under blankets, and cried as snow turned to rain. Ice melted slowly, dripping down houses into snow-crusted gutters. Tears dried on her cheeks as the clouds faded from black to grey. The town breathed again, and peaked outside. The sun, missing for weeks, gently brushed the clouds aside for a better look. The town glistened, flooded streets dried, and the people ventured out for food and fresh air.

Showered, dressed, she shook off her loss, went outside, and walked away.

(written at 150 words, cut 50 & revised slightly, to get a 100 word story)

06.24.13
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Free Fiction: “Notes On My Recent Job Interview With Your Firm”

Excerpt:

Dear Nancy from HR,

I am writing to reply to the survey I found attached to the letter informing me that, “we have determined that other applicants’ skills and experience more closely meet our company’s needs”. I realize your letter was mailed several weeks ago, but I was unavoidably detained during that time, and was unable to respond earlier. I have been advised that answering the questions in depth may relieve some lingering feelings of unease I have been experiencing since my interview. Please bear with me, as your form has limited space for additional notes. Some answers continue on the back.

1. How clear was the information you were given before the interview?

C. Moderately clear

After a pleasant phone call asking me to appear for an interview with your firm, I was emailed an itinerary which included the names of staff members I would be meeting, as well as a schedule of events. While I admit that a few of the items seemed strange, I assumed this was your department’s attempt at job-related humor. In hindsight, the schedule was extremely accurate, and I accept the blame for not realizing “enter Applicant Tracking System” meant I’d be injected with a radioactive tracer. (The bruise has mostly faded.)

Download a PDF of the whole story here!

#sfwapro

04.09.13
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I’m part of “Women In Genre”? Yay! Have some free fiction.

Several people are writing about their favorite “Women in Genre” this month. There’s even a hastag for it on Twitter if you’d like to see more of the discussion. Haralambi Markov (a Bulgarian writer, editor, pop culture geek, and avid reader) is writing a blog post each day, featuring his favorite women working in speculative fiction.

Today is Day 9 on his blog. Today, he wrote about me.

It basically says that I edit as well as write, and that with both of those together I’m putting out short fiction he thinks people need to read. He also recommends my blog, since I post about being a writer and editor in the midst of a change in how genre – and women in genre – is perceived Plus, you know, trying to balance my career with everything else.

Markov says that when you read my work, you can tell that:

Cuinn lives for genre and Dagan Books is a direct reflection of her passion and love.

That’s true, and I’m tickled that other people can see it. I know I’m at the beginning of my career. I have only put out a handle of books as a publisher, and have maybe twice that number in fiction sales myself. But – I do love what I do. I love spec fic. I love reading it, and I love being a part of where it’s going.

Markov mentions that he hasn’t read very many of my stories, coming to me instead as a reader of the anthologies I’ve edited, so here are links to where you can find a couple of my favorites online:

“Mrs. Henderson’s Cemetery Dance” published by Red Penny Papers in their Summer 2012 issue.

“Call Center Blues” published at Daily Science Fiction. Sent to subscribers Nov 2, 2011; posted to site Nov 9, 2011

“Monsters, Monsters, Everywhere”, published by Crossed Genres Magazine in issue #34 (MONSTERS), October 1, 2011.

“Annabelle Tree“, published in the Southern Fried Weirdness: Reconstruction anthology to benefit tornado relief efforts, May 13, 2011.

Click on the story name to read it. “Mrs. Henderson” is playful fantasy bordering on horror without actually being scary. “Call Center” is science fiction, and short – a little less than a thousand words. “Monsters” is sci fi but much creepier than the others. “Annabelle” is magic realism, and is sad but – I hope – beautiful, too.

Please let me know what you think, or if there’s anything you want to see more of. And thank you for thinking of me when you think of Women in Genre.

12.02.12
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Story Bits, Or How I Answered a Meme With Too Many Words

A few days ago I offered to write a sentence or so of any story you asked for. Three people (Kelly Stiles, A.C. Wise, and Mike Allen) took me up on the challenge, and in return I wrote a lot more than a sentence. Here are those pieces.

Kelly asked for “the story of a cat, his boy and how they saved the world together.” After pointing out that sounded like a friend’s comic book which is basically that story, I thought of a different take on the idea:

Earl surveyed the wreckage, several blocks of first flattened and then devastated but still standing buildings, radiating out from underneath that oddly pulsating ball of light which hung in the ashen sky.

“We have to get closer,” he said. “The device will only work if we’re within 1000 feet. Of course, at that range another pulse would vaporize us, but if we can shut this one down, the science geeks predict the rest will collapse too, in a cascade effect.” His voice was calm, his muscles tense but still. Only the tip of his ginger tail swished.

“You’re the boss,” the boy said, shouldering a gun nearly as big as he was. “Just tell me what to do.”

A.C. wanted “The one about the reverse astral projectionist who summoned distant places to her in her sleep, please.”

David knocked again, harder. “Elizabeth! Open the door! You have something …” He looked down at the wet carpet, smelled the faintly salty water spreading out from beneath his roommate’s bedroom door. “There’s something leaking in there. Did you get a fish tank?”

There was no answer. The wet carpet sucked at his toes. Behind him, the dampness was spreading into the hallway.

“I’m coming in,” he said loudly, turning her door knob slowly.

Inside, Elizabeth was sound asleep, lying on her side in her bed, one leg sticking out from underneath her blankets.

Next to her a palm tree had gouged out a piece of the ceiling and bent unnaturally to one side, too tall for the room. Sand piled up at its base, spilling into her closet and under her dresser. A small crab scuttled back and forth across the sand, confused.

“Oh, no,” David sighed. “Not again.”

And Mike, never to outdone in the slightly weird department, asked for “The one about the woman who finds the World Serpent beneath the subway system.”

At that moment, she blamed the shoes. There was more to it than that, another part of her brain screamed at her, and she felt, in a disconnected way, that she should do something other than stand there, staring at a scale the size of her head, and blaming her brand new $340 pumps, but she wasn’t sure what came next. She had been waiting for her train when her aching left heel made her lean down to adjust her ankle strap…

That made her purse spill open, and while she was frantically scooping up its contents, someone in the crowd kicked her smartphone, and then someone else, knocking it away from her like she was caught in a scene from a slapstick comedy. She chased after it, scraping a knee getting up, yelling at the sea of uncaring feet which kept her phone just out of reach, but no one stopped to help.

She remembered that it bounced down into a stairwell she’d never noticed before. The sound of the phone clacking against the stairs kept her rushing downward, downward, as the tile changed to cream and green and florescent overhead lights were replaced by bright globes set into the ceiling.

And still her phone tumbled downward.

At some point it must have stopped falling, because she was vaguely aware that she held it in her hand, but the thing in front of her, the enormous impossible creature filling the tunnel, that had her attention now. Her feet throbbed, and for one horrible moment she looked down at them, and at those heels – imported from Italy, cool grey, a sexy twist to her business suits, made from the finest snakeskin.

“Oh god,” she whispered, her head snapping up to stare again at the side of the giant serpent. “Listen, about the shoes …”

Thanks for playing!