Category: stories

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Birthday Barbeque by Robert Runté

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SF Canada member Robert Runté was published, September 7, 2020 in Potato Soup Journal. “Birthday Barbeque” is a contemporary flash fiction story with a magic realism twist.

Snaps are simple of course, but this latest model had a pretty sophisticated built-in editing suite. Fortunately, it had an ‘easy’ setting for people like Grandpa. Software did everything for you. “See, Grandpa, you just have to remember to press this button, and move your finger over what you want to erase, and it’s gone.” 

Dr. Robert Runté is Senior Editor with EssentialEdits.ca, a retired professor (University of Lethbridge), and former Senior Editor for Five Rivers Publishing. As an academic, editor, reviewer, and organizer, Robert has been actively promoting Canadian SF for over forty years. He was a founding Director of NonCon, Context89, and SF Canada; and has served on the Boards of the Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society, On Spec Magazine, Tesseract Books, and The Writers Guild of Alberta. In addition to dozens of conference papers, journal articles, book chapters, and a half dozen entries in the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, Robert has edited over 150 issues of various SF newsletters.

Read “Birthday Barbeque” at potatosoupjournal.com.

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Death and The Mother by Melissa Yuan-Innes

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Image by Richard Tennant

SF Canada member Melissa Yuan-Innes was published August 3, 2020 in Enchanted Conversation: A Fairytale Magazine. Her fractured fairytale “Death and The Mother” presents a chilling view of how the Angel of Death pursued Snow White throughout her childhood.

Death chuckled. It felt like finger bones clinking in her throat. “It does not work that way, my Queen. Once a human has been marked for Death, I will keep coming, no matter how many lives are thrown in my path.”

This popular story is currently trending on the magazine’s website, alongside the richly detailed illustration of the Angel of Death, shown here.

“Editor’s note: I couldn’t resist this angle on the Angel of Death. Melissa takes a classic fairy tale and Death and mashes them up in a very unexpected way. A surprising and satisfying tale.”

Melissa writes speculative fiction as Melissa Yuan-Innes and medical thrillers as Melissa Yi. She is an emergency physician and award-winning writer. In her newest crime novel, DEATH FLIGHT, Dr. Hope Sze battles murder on an airplane. Previous Hope Sze volumes were recommended by the Globe and Mail and CBC Books as best suspense novels of the season.

Read “Death and The Mother” at fairytalemagazine.com.

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“Molecular Rage” by Marie Bilodeau now out in Analog!

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SF Canada member Marie Bilodeau has a story in the Sept/Oct 2019 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. “Molecular Rage” is about road rage and teleportation. Tangent Online says Marie “shows great imagination”.

Marie Bilodeau is an Ottawa-based author and storyteller, with eight published books to her name. Her speculative fiction has won several awards and has been translated into French (Les Éditions Alire) and Chinese (SF World). Her short stories have also appeared in various anthologies. In a past life not-so-long ago, she was Deputy Publisher for The Ed Greenwood Group (TEGG). Marie is also a storyteller and has told stories across Canada in theatres, tea shops, at festivals and under disco balls. She’s won story slams with personal stories, has participated in epic tellings at the National Arts Centre, and has adapted classical material.

Marie is co-host of the Archivos Podcast Network with Dave Robison, co-chair of Ottawa’s speculative fiction literary convention CAN-CON with Derek Künsken, co-chair of Ottawa ChiSeries with Nicole Lavigne and Matt Moore, and is a casual blogger at Black Gate Magazine. Find her at https://www.mariebilodeau.com/.

Subscribe to Analog or look for a copy of the current issue in your favorite science fiction bookstore.

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News from Colleen Anderson

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SF Canada member Colleen Anderson has had several bits of good news lately.

She has been selected as Guest of Honour at The Creative Ink Festival speculative fiction convention in Burnaby, BC in March, 2020. The Creative Ink Festival is a three-day event full of inspiring panels, presentations and workshops. Designed to be inclusive for all levels of writing, the festival is a chance for writers to have the opportunity to chat with industry insiders in a relaxed and supportive environment. Readers have the chance to meet their favourite authors and find out about the authorial process.

Colleen also had two new publications, with twinned stories appearing recently in Thrilling Words Spectulative Fiction Publishing. “Nautilus” is free to read on the Thrilling Words website. “Heartstrings”, a second story in the same setting, is available to supporting members.

Colleen is a three-time Aurora Award finalist and was longlisted for the Stoker Award in fiction. She placed in the Balticon, Rannu, Wax and Crucible poetry competitions and has performed her work before audiences in the US, UK and Canada. Colleen has been a poetry and fiction online editor, slush editor for Chizine, and also co-edited Canadian anthologies Playground of Lost Toys (Aurora nominated) and Tesseracts 17, and her solo anthology Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, was published in 2018. A Body of Work was recently published by Black Shuck Books, UK. Some of her work is in nEvermore!, Beauty of Death, Shoreline of Infinity, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, OnSpec, Polu Texni, The Future Fire, and Cemetery Dance.

Colleen has a BFA in Creative Writing and has received grants from the BC Arts Council and the Canada Council for writing. The Horror Writers Association granted her a partial scholarship to attend Stokercon in 2019. She is working on several collections of poetry, a couple of novels, and marketing more anthology ideas. Once in a while she still does freelance copyediting, and used to copyedit for New York publishers and companies. Her blog about writing and life can be found at www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com, and she sometimes invites guest authors to write about their works as well.

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“Bootleg Jesus” by Tonya Liburd

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SF Canada member Tonya Liburd has a new short story out at Diabolical Plots, the popular submissions tool and online magazine. “Bootleg Jesus” is a story about religion, family, and magic. Mara lives in an isolated village where magic isn’t supposed to manifest in people. A place that’s supposed to be safe from the god-like beings who manifest particularly potent gifts. For Mara’s friend Sydney, though, it’s not at all a safe place, and for all the children it’s somewhere they are not really free.

This is an interesting coming-of-age story, exploring those age-old ideas of what it means to grow up and find you don’t match the expectations of those around you.                     – Tangent Online

 

Liburd’s opening line pulls you into a compelling fantasy tale that is both gritty and tense, set in a world where magic flows just beneath the surface of everyday life.                   – Barnes and Noble

 

It’s often difficult and complex, but it’s also very much worth spending some time with. A great read!                    – Quick Sip Reviews

 

Tonya Liburd shares a birthday with Simeon Daniel and Ray Bradbury, which may tell you a little something about her. She is a 2017 and 2018 Rhysling nominee, and has been longlisted in the 2015 Carter V. Cooper(Vanderbilt)/Exile Short Fiction Competition. Her fiction is used in Nisi Shawl’s workshops as an example of ‘code switching’, and in Tananarive Due’s course at UCLA. She is the Senior Editor of Abyss & Apex magazine. You can find her blogging at http://Spiderlilly.com, on Twitter at @somesillywowzer, or on Patreon at www.Patreon.com/TonyaLiburd.

Read “Bootleg Jesus” for free at Diabolical Plots.

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New issues of Polar Borealis!

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Numerous SF Canada members have work in the two most recent issues of Polar Borealis, edited by SF Canada member Richard Graeme Cameron.

Issue #9 (Feb-Mar 2019) includes cover art by Akem, a poem by Andrea Schlecht, and stories by Robert Dawson, Geoffrey Hart, and Robert Runté.

Issue #10 (Apr-May 2019) features poems by Rhea Rose, Neile Graham, and Colleen Anderson. Stories include works by Ron Friedman and Matthew Bin. And there’s an article by Robert Runté.

Download both issues for free at Polar Borealis and show your support of this Canadian SF magazine via the GoFundMe.