The #sfnovellaofthemonth for March 2022 is Rebecca J. Allred and Gordon B. White’s And In Her Smile, the World, published by Trepidatio Publishing in February 2022. Lately I have a weakness for tiny books that pack as much unsettling detail into their brief little worlds as possible. I’ve been aware for some time that Gordon …
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The #sfnovellaofthemonth for February 2022 is Jessica Lévai’s “vampire opera in verse”, The Night Library of Sternendach, published by Lanternfish Press in April 2021. As someone who generally adores most things involving vampires, operas, novellas, and books that aren’t quite like other books, I had a feeling that Sternendach—a book which speaks to each and …
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#sfstoryoftheday 2021 yearend mixtape Since I started #sfstoryoftheday on February 13, 2021, I have read and tweeted about 322 new-to-me speculative stories. I liked them all; I don’t share the stories I don’t like, I just keep reading until something clicks. Please know that if I shared a story of yours I thought it was …
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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 …
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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 …
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M. A. Blanchard 