It took me a long time to place this story and it's a piece close to my heart. I don't pull straight from my own life a lot, but the memories attached to France are real. If the ghost is real, too, I haven't spoken to her, as far as I can remember.
Not only is it spooky season, but my short story, "Frost Bloom," is in this month's issue of Nightmare Magazine along with an Author Spotlight. You should absolutely buy an issue and support editor Wendy Wagner and my fellow authors, Orrin Grey, Franklin Ard, and Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas.
But, if you don't want to, that's fine, because it's free today!
Enjoy some queer horror, friends!
I'm really excited to be part of such an all-star line-up. Register for the upcoming weekend of August 13-15 for a damn good program. And on Sunday, you can see me yelling about the ethics and boundaries of fiction! Hurray!
Sunday - 2:00 PM Main Track 1 • Everywhere a Threshold • Gillian Daniels (moderator), Amal El-Mohtar, Erin Roberts, Geoff Ryman, T.X. Watson
Fantasy has always drawn energy from the border between quotidian Here and numinous There, out beyond the fields we know. But we can no longer assume we share the same Here. The shrinking of the globe has brought many of us into contact with worldviews that are profoundly different from the ones we know, in addition to uncovering unexpected commonalities. How does fantasy handle this tectonic shift? What are the works that navigate, nimbly or otherwise, this multiplicity of Heres and Theres and the blurring of the borders among them?
Sunday - 4:00 PM Main Track 2 • Content Tags: Implementation, Accommodation, and Ancillary Art • Katherine Crighton (moderator), Gillian Daniels, Foz Meadows, AJ Odasso, Megan Whalen Turner
The increased prevalence of content tags has lead to growing questions around implementation. Useful for accommodation, content tags are also deployed on dynamic platforms such as AO3 to warn, advertise, and joke, becoming extra-diagetic material that is enjoyable on its own terms while providing meaningful context for the work. Still, there is a divide between those who want them and those who find them objectionable. How do content tags enhance and complicate reader experience, and what are emerging best practices that bookstores or publishers could adopt?
It was fun to do. Getting to talk to people about my specific interests is always a delight. Because I largely move in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre circles, this was a really unique opportunity. Thanks to Peter for asking thoughtful questions and his willingness to engage over different literature!
