I’ve just returned the contract for my flash fiction piece, “Going Under,” which will appear in Liquid Imagination at the end of this month.

It’s a strange little story that is hard to classify, though I think of it as dark fantasy or slipstream. Or perhaps absurdist horror.  It was one of the first new stories I wrote after coming off my writing hiatus in 2012 and it took a while to get it right.  I’m glad the folks at Liquid Imagination liked it and gave it a home.  I hope you’ll like it, too.

I have several new flash pieces in the works.  One is already making the rounds.

In other news, I’ve been on a reading tear of late.  About a week ago, I had a sudden, powerful urge to dive into a novel rather than read short stories. I’ve been finishing one every two days or so (one a day on weekends) ever since.  I’ve been enjoying Scalzi, Willis, Butcher and Dellamonica as well as a couple of literary novels I’d started but never got around to finishing.

I also read Osama by Lavie Tidhar and thought it was stunning. You know that feeling you get while reading, the one that says, I-want-to-write-something-like-this?  That’s how I felt while reading Osama.  Highly recommended for those who don’t mind their speculative element subtle and mysterious (which is often how I like it best), who appreciate language that is beautiful without being overly lyrical, who find genre mixes intriguing, and who like emotional impact with their fiction.  Osama is atmospheric and full of mood, but its emotional impact goes far deeper than that — and it lasts.