Beyond the Shrinking World, now at Podcastle

Last week, Podcastle posted a recording of my short story Beyond the Shrinking World (which originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies almost a year ago) read by the fantastic Dominick Rabrun. It's totally free to download or listen to, and you should check it out. This is, without a doubt, one of the coolest things that I have ever got to experience in publishing. Dominick does a great job reading the story, and hearing someone else's interpretation of every sentence I wrote and every character's voice in the thing... can anything possibly be cooler than that?

The answer's no, but the fun doesn't stop there, because the story begins with an editorial/introduction from Dave Thompson. The broader topic is grimdark, and, while I don't think I would ultimately place my work in that category, it's interesting to view it in that light. Ultimately, Dave agrees that I probably don't fit there, but he says that my work is extremely dark and almost Lovecraftian at times -- both of those, needless to say, are characterizations that had me grinning ear to ear to hear. Oh, and the bit about how he really liked the story and will be first in line to read anything else I write in the world didn't hurt.

There's also an Escape Artists forum where people can discuss the story, and you should clearly head over there and write paragraph after paragraph of drooling praise (or, uh, whatever you'd like to write). As to what people have said already, it's fascinating to read. The reaction's mixed, and while I won't lie that I (like every writer out there, I'd imagine) would be quite happy with everyone loving my work, I expected that. I know I have turned into a bit of an oddball when it comes to taste, and I think I might be a bit too self-consciously pretentious and nihilistic for universal appeal (I say this, I must stress, as a condemnation of my own, admitted personal obsessions rather than as a bitter stab at readers at large). Hearing that my prose, world-building, and general darkness worked is great, and the more negative comments about packing too much in to too little space had a far point that I hope I can address a bit in future works in the world and in general -- though those readers really should have seen the first draft, which had just as much content in far less space and was a total mess.

The only comment that made me really kick myself is about the German being flawed, because that one is totally My Bad. Looking back, thinking that an introductory class worth of experience was enough to pull another language off in print was ridiculous, and I'll certainly be returning to those sections before/if the piece ever has a third outing.

Anyway, enough rambling on my part. If you decide to give the piece a read or a listen, I hope that you enjoy it.

The Dream Journal of a Would-Be Insomniac

My Horror flash story "The Dream Journal of a Would-Be Insomniac" is now up and delectable on the Horror D'oeuvres site. It requires a subscription, but the fee gets you access to quite a bit of other quality shorts in addition to mine. Check it out!

Painting Nothing

The Gloaming has now released its final issue. The magazine's closing is a sad event for dark fiction. The issue's release, however, brings with it some great stuff.

Amidst a myriad of downright snazzy tales, it also has one of mine, a piece of Horror flash entitled "Painting Nothing." I wrote it a long while back, drafting it the night I finished Thomas Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco. So yeah, it's basically a few hundred words of worship. But I think it's not bad worship, as these things go. The coolest part of the publication, though, may be that there is an illustration next to it. Seeing how any part of your work is interpreted by an artist is just, well, totally and incredibly awesome.

Check it out, and don't forget to read the rest of the issue while you're at it.

"Hope Immortal" and "Solo"

I know what you are thinking. That Katz guy is a great writer, but where are the spaceships? Can he even call himself a Science Fiction fan? Well, I have good news for you, my SF-demanding (and totally not hypothetical) reader: the SF has arrived. The year’s end saw not only one but two of my Science Fiction tales hit the (e)shelves.

First up is my story “Hope Immortal” in Earthbound Fiction’s Dark Stars anthology. What's it about? Well, we start with dear Naryk waking up, alone, on a ship hurtling through space. And the air is running out. I'll give you the first small section as a little sampler:

Naryk woke and could not breathe. He was pressed against an unyielding barrier, 

and black spots danced against a darker backdrop in his eyes, like stars. He realized he 

was standing up, his hands crossed over his chest and his legs tight together.

There was a button, wasn’t there? Men in crumpled uniforms had told him, told 

all of them, about a button. 

What button?

There was no air. His fingers were intertwined, and he didn’t have the space to 

separate his hands. He was dying; he would die here in the dark, alone.

His hands were wrapped around the button, that’s where it was. A button for 

emergencies right beneath his intertwined fingers. 

He pushed it.

The glass slid away, and a hissing filled the air, a lone harbinger of sound almost 

unbearable after the silence that had come before. Naryk fell into a new world of light 

and pain.

Alone.

I wrote "Hope Immortal" a long time ago, but I think that it's held up extremely well, and I hope that you do too. Of course, it's not the only piece in the anthology. For your three bucks, you also get tales by Samuel Mae, Deborah Walker, and a whole host of others.

Then there is the matter of "Solo," which is a quirky little piece that I quite like. Interstellar Fiction has it up to read, and for free, so there is really no conceivable or earthly reason to not pop over right now and devour every delectable sentence of the thing. It is, to give the briefest possible account I can, a Science Fiction reenactment of Lovecraft's themes that aims to both effectively execute them and to be downright silly and a great deal of fun throughout.

Enjoy!

"A Game of Distance" in Plasma Frequency Magazine

Plasma Frequency Magazine just released its third issue, and my Fantasy short "A Game of Distance" is the first story in it.

Were I to sum up "A Game of Distance" in three words, I think I'd go with espionage, magic, and friendship. Unless, of course, I could just write awesome in triplicate. Years back, the story was inspired by  a scene in Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn trilogy, in which a spy grows to know their quarry, and was the first flash piece I wrote. It's been touched up a bit since, and I doubt it has any actual similarities to Hamilton's Science Fiction epic, but I do quite like the little piece. Hopefully you do too.

The issue does, though, have a bevy of other fiction and other content as well. The print edition is ten bucks, but you can also read for free. Check it out!

News: Editorial Assistant, Publication v9, and the Kenyon Collegian

Though I’ve been horrifically dilatory about finally mentioning it on here, I’ve spent the last few weeks as an Editorial Assistant over at Innsmouth Free Press. In that time, I’ve begun a column about upcoming Horror releases, contacted reviewers for the upcoming anthology Fungi, and participated in numerous dark rituals. Wait, scratch that last part. You aren’t supposed to know about that yet.

Anyway, it’s a rather exciting position that involves working with some great people and on some great books. As for what it means round these parts, the answer is, at least for the moment: not a great deal. Reviews shall continue as they have been. I will, though, link future new release columns up so any interested readers can hop on over and take a look. The one that just passed is here. If you are a Horror writer with a book coming out, feel free to email me for inclusion, but know that I would strongly prefer you do so only a week or two before release date. If you are a Horror reviewer and would like a crack at Fungi, email me about that too.

In other news (which is to say, the news that tripped this news post from “I’ve really to to get on that” to “this delay is just getting embarrassing”), the good folks over at Plasma Frequency Magazine are to publish my short story “A Game of Distance” in their third issue, scheduled for release on December 5^th.

Finally, the Kenyon Collegian (which is to say, the newspaper of Kenyon College, that college at which I’ve been reading books for degrees and then relaxing by reading more for fun for some time now) has featured me in an article entitled "Existential Themes and Swordfights." Exciting stuff!

"Legwork" in Fantastic Frontiers Magazine

In all the excitement of late, I haven't had a chance to mention (or peruse myself) one other piece of absolutely fantastic news. The debut issue of Fantastic Frontiers Magazine is now available in the Apple marketplace, and, among numerous other worthy tales, is my short story "Legwork." To give you an idea of the story's contents and style, I wrote it fresh off the high of discovering not only VanderMeer's short stories but the writings of Haruki Murakami. I can't claim to have truly captured either of those titans' skill, but I think I did get something worthwhile out of the attempt.

Cameron Pierce - Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom

Last week, Innsmouth Free Press published my review of Cameron Pierce's Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom. In case you were wondering, the book is just as bizarre as the title makes it sound. You can read the review here.

Publications 7 and 8

Over the past week or two, I've had two rather nice pieces of news that I didn't get a chance to report.

First, there's my horror flash Painting Nothing, which was just accepted by The Gloaming for publication. Painting Nothing was written rather early compared to most of my other horror stories, and it's admittedly not as subtle and is a bit more blatant in its worship of Thomas Ligotti (I wrote it as I finished Teatro Grottesco for the first time). Still, I think it's a nice tale, and I hope you all enjoy it when it surfaces.

Then there's the matter of Legwork, which is a rather strange fantasy short I wrote some time ago when high on the inspiration energy of having just discovered Haruki Murakami and the short fiction of Jeff VanderMeer. Fantastic Frontiers Magazine thought it worthy to be in their debut issue.

With these two sales, I have a total of four forthcoming stories, which is a rather unprecedented (but quite nice) experience. Oddly enough, the past months' onslaught of publications comes in a time when my output's been rather sluggish. Since the fall, I've only managed four stories (one of which sold to Beneath Ceaseless Skies), which is rather below last year's frenzied pace. Still, the summer should hopefully give me some time to get the numbers back up.

Publication v6

Over the last year and a bit, I've had a fair few publications to announce around these parts. In case you couldn't tell from the posts, I was grinning from ear to ear for each of them and, just maybe, doing a bit of jumping up and down. Well, I've another of them, and this one's a big deal. Maybe the biggest since the breakthrough of the very first. Though I haven't yet gotten to review one of their issues, Beneath Ceaseless Skies is one of my absolute favorite places to find fantasy stories. Just a few days ago, they accepted my story "Beyond the Shrinking World." To make an awesome thing even more awesome, this is not only my first fantasy sale, not only the sale of my longest story yet (by far), and not only a sale to an awesome market, but my first pro sale. So yeah, I'm pretty excited. I'll keep you guys updated as I know more.

Strings

My story Strings just got published in Eschatology Journal. The reading's free, so why not head on over and check it out?

Hands of the Marionette Player by Tina Modotti 

Publication v4

Tell me straight, dear readers: are your lives too cheerful at the moment? Are you lacking the necessary depressing horror? Missing all dark flair? Desperately requiring a short, sweet, and disturbing shock to the system? Well, let me try and fix that. On February 16th, Eschatology Journal will be publishing my short story Strings.

The Dummy and Bards and Sages

My short horror story The Dummy is now available in the newest issue of Bards and Sages Quarterly (print/kindle), and my name seems to be on the cover. The story's a compassionate, bright, and hopeful tale, about... Well, no. It's dark and disturbing. But hopefully quite enjoyable nonetheless. To either whet your appetite or put you off forever, here's the first paragraph:

The dummy was a work in progress, a Michael to torment and a Michael to love. It was an impromptu sculpture, a masterpiece of longing made from paint and wood, hand carved jewels for eyes and ivory for nails, and blood from a pin for its heart. Fleya spent thirty-three hours mastering every drift of hair, but the face was an abstraction, a swirl of paint and indentations. The dummy was half dream to look upon, and it was snow-cold to the touch.

Publication: Twitter Story on Nanoism

I wonder if anyone remembers the Twitter Stories I mentioned a few months back. But even those of you who caught that post, and read the two published pieces (one of which can still be read here), did not hear the whole story. See, there was a third piece. I wrote it at the same time as the others, sent it off, and... waited.

Well, no, that's not quite right. As it was so short, I didn't really include it on my normal story spreadsheet. In fact, I kind of forgot all about it. Which made it all the more surprising when, just a few days ago, I received an email from Nanoism telling me that they'd accepted it and, oh, by the way, were publishing it that day. Not exactly bad news. And, since I'm a firm believer in spreading such good tidings (or something like that), I figured I'd give you a link. If you've any interest, come check out my latest (very, very, very short) story here.

The Model

Because great news comes in twos, my twitter story The Model is now up free at Trapeze. Check it out, it's brief and rather cheery. Or, at least, one of those.

[Note: since this fell on a Tuesday, this week's review will be posted on Friday.]

Publication v3

My story The Dummy will be appearing in Bards and Sages Quarterly come January.

The Metamorphosis of Jane Doe

My (very) short story, The Metamorphosis of Jane Doe, is now up at Linger Fiction here. Check it out, it's got everything - words, disturbing horror, and fur. You know you can't resist that last one.

Publication v2

What could possibly shift my focus from A Dance with Dragons the very week of its release? Not much. In fact, just about the only thing I can think of is a publication. And, on that note, The Metamorphosis of Jane Doe will be appearing in Linger Fiction come August.

Yeah, in case you can't tell, I'm pretty fucking thrilled.

Game Published by Cuento Magazine

My micro-fiction piece Game went up with Cuento Magazine yesterday. You can read it here; it's the tweet (what a strange word...) posted on the 24th above my tweeted biography.

Haruki Murakami - After Dark

My review of Haruki Murakami's After Dark is now up on Strange Horizons. I think the suspense of the whole matter (and yes, there was suspense) was broken when I mentioned that Strange Horizons had purchased one of my reviews a bit back, but it's still a damn fine day. I've already spent about half an hour staring at the thing (it says my name up at the top of the screen; how's that even possible?) but you guys are free to look too.