Writer, Reader, Reviewer
The #sfnovellaofthemonth for January 2022 is a double feature: Sisters of the Vast Black (Tordotcom, October 2019) and Sisters of the Forsaken Stars (Tordotcom, February 2022) by Lina Rather. I requested an advance review copy of Sisters of the Forsaken Stars from the publisher via NetGalley on a whim, not realizing until after receiving the... Continue Reading →
The #sfnovellaofthemonth for December 2021 is The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed, published in September 2021 by ECW Press. Incredibly, Mohamed published three novellas in 2021 (and a novel, and a novelette, and...). Even more incredibly, all of these novellas are, well, incredible. After I read the second of the three, And What... Continue Reading →
The #sfnovellaofthemonth for November 2021 is & This is How to Stay Alive by Shingai Njeri Kagunda, recently published as part of the 2021 novella series from Neon Hemlock Press. Kagunda published a short story of the same name and themes in Fantasy Magazine last year; reading her interview for Fantasy’s Author Spotlight added to... Continue Reading →
The #sfnovellaofthemonth for October 2021 is Rookfield by Gordon B. White, forthcoming from Journalstone’s Trepidatio Publishing imprint. I’ve never been a big horror reader. I’m too easily frightened to find much pleasure in adding fictional terrors to the real shadows I’m already jumping at every time I move, breathe, or catch a glimpse of something... Continue Reading →
The #sfnovellaofthemonth for September 2021 is In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu, just out from Tordotcom Publishing. The city of Ora is a place of beauty grown (quite literally) from unbearable trauma. Its luxuriant tangles of vines, structurally integral trees, and streets named for flowers and painted with their namesake floral motifs to... Continue Reading →
I love reading books that feel like something new. I don’t know about you, but, before reading Cynthia Zhang's short novel After the Dragons (out August 19 from the wonderful Stelliform Press), I had never read a story that juxtaposed climate change, alienation, and chronic illness with adorable stray dragons and queer romance. I cannot... Continue Reading →
The #sfnovellaofthemonth for August 2021 is Michael J. DeLuca’s Night Roll, published in October 2020 by Stelliform Press. Reading Night Roll is like coasting through the unknowable streets of someone else’s dream. Strange, mysterious, lovely; laced with ribbons of slowly-unspooling anxiety and spiked with passing slivers of danger, this gently wild novella is a ride... Continue Reading →
The #sfnovellaofthemonth for July 2021 is Premee Mohamed’s upcoming And What Can We Offer You Tonight, out July 20 from Neon Hemlock Press. And What Can We Offer You Tonight is a gorgeously devastating little book. Mohamed’s lush, expressive prose creates a tangible world for readers to sink inside and builds the complex and intricate... Continue Reading →
“The novelty wore off, but the wonder didn’t...” This paragraph opening on page 11 of the July 2021 #sfnovellaofthe month, Nghi Vo’s When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (2020, Tordotcom Publishing) describes its protagonist’s experience during a ride up a mountain on the back of a mammoth bedecked with iron bells. It equally describes... Continue Reading →
M. A. Blanchard 