2026
“Academic Neutrality” (audio version)
Lightspeed, January 2026
(horror, 1498 words)
It’s been a month. It’s only been a month, and now when you walk to the library, you don’t hear laughter or music or voices. You don’t hear protest chants. You don’t even hear screaming.
— Reviewed by Sam Tomaino at SFRevu as “truly horrifying.”
— Reviewed by Maria Haskins in Locus #782 as “gory, wickedly funny, and viscerally disturbing.”
— Recommended in Stephen Graham Jones’s “Best Reads from Lately.”
“The Last God of Talam Dor”
GigaNotoSaurus, January 2026
(fantasy, 10800 words)
The bones of kings and lords and desperate boys line the bottoms of lakes and forest floors. Though the gods demand three deaths, few men manage more than one.
— Reviewed (and recommended) by Maria Haskins in Locus #782 as “wrenching, richly layered … a devastatingly powerful story about love and faith.”
— Reviewed by Infrequent SF Microreviews as “absolutely beautiful and haunting, fierce and full of grief.”
2025
“Ornithogonia, or Five Featherings”
Flash Fiction Online, December 2025
(fantasy, 1000 words)
The first time you plucked a feather from your lover’s skin, you did so laughing.
— Reviewed by Maria Haskins in Locus #782, highlighting “the question of what, and who, is worthy of our love and our devotion … I love the voice of this story.”
“The God of the Leftmost Door”
Enter Here: An Anthology of Portals, December 2025
(fantasy, 3700 words)
There are gods for nearly everything, but in all your time in the in-between, there’s never been a god of the leftmost door. It’s never seemed necessary: most dead folk have no trouble with the door, in the end. The dying is the hard part.
“A Recipe for the Day Alban Kills the King” (audio version)
Orion’s Belt, June 2025
(fantasy, 790 words)
Don’t run to him when he steps through the door. Don’t cry out. Don’t tell him you’ve missed his smiling face. He won’t be smiling.
— Reviewed by Infrequent SF Microreviews as “absolutely lovely and full of feeling.”
“A Runaway Android’s Guide to the Oro-Ti Night Market”
Small Wonders, June 2025
(sci-fi, 1000 words)
Recall the weight of a stone in your palm, the weight of a blessing murmured in your ear. A cup of tea. A stranger’s smile.
— Reviewed (and recommended) by Charles Payseur in Locus #775 as “an almost dreamlike how-to meant for androids escaping bondage … a wonderful read.”
“Hound, Hart, Crow, Queen”
Morgana le Fay: New & Ancient Arthurian Tales, Flame Tree Press, March 2025
(fantasy, 3900 words)
I hated her at once. That much I knew, even if the sweetness of her smile made my stomach cramp. Even if the firelight in her eyes made my mouth go dry.
“Handsomest Gentlest”
Haven Speculative, March 2025
(fantasy, 2900 words)
Everybody said Black Shuck was a great big fearsome devil, but I wasn’t so scared the night I met him in the woods. I’d only been dead for two hours, and I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to be afraid of some old black dog curled up crying in the bushes.
— Longlisted in Best Short Fiction for the British Science Fiction Association Awards.
“Erysichthon’s Daughter”
Small Wonders, March 2025
(fantasy, 1000 words)
Daddy, I know you didn’t mean to fell the sacred oak. I know you wouldn’t lie to me. You swore you’d never lie to me.
— Reviewed by Infrequent SF Microreviews as “a lovely and sharp portrait of hunger and duty and peace.”
— Reviewed by Eugenia Triantafyllou as “chilling and heartbreaking.”
“Lucinda Espinosa’s Twenty-Seventh Death”
Fusion Fragment, February 2025
(sci-fi, 4900 words)
Luce doesn’t have to look over her shoulder to know who’s standing in the doorway, but she does anyway. Her heart jerks and twists like paper in a fire. “Not you again,” she says. Even half-drunk, she has the good sense to feel embarrassed when her voice cracks.
— Reviewed by Alex Brown in Reactor’s Must Read Short Speculative Fiction column as “a little bit western, a little bit queer love story, and a little bit sci-fi multiverse weirdness with two anti-hero main characters you’ll love spending time with.”
— Reviewed (and recommended) by Charles Payseur in Locus #772 as “a heartbreaking story beautifully told.”
— Reviewed by Danai Christopoulou in Haven Spec as “a sapphic love story that is as inescapable as the storm coming the protagonists’ way … with prose crackling with mirth and sharp as razor wire.”
— Reviewed by Graeme Cameron in Amazing Stories as “one of the most original stories I’ve ever read.”
“The Hag of Beinn Nibheis”
Flash Fiction Online, January 2025
(fantasy, 970 words)
In the Dead Month, Brigid goes to the mountain to speak with the hag. She does not know what else to do.
— Reviewed by Charles Payseur in Locus #771 as a story that “digs into not just the cold, but the isolating power of winter … a lovely read.”
— Reviewed by Sam Tomaino at SFRevu as “poignant.”
— Reviewed by Vanessa Fogg in her Short Fiction Recs as “a wintry little fairy tale about sorrow and loss, and unexpected warmth.”
2024
“Linden Honey, Blackcurrant Wine”
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, July 2024
(fantasy, 3300 words)
What a fool to hope for more than silence—to think she might be welcomed, much less forgiven, after all this time! Irena stands alone in the heart of the grove, where she has never stood alone before, and lets disappointment settle like snow on her shoulders.
— Reviewed by Charles Payseur in Locus #764 as “a powerful and memorable narrative that simultaneously urges that it’s never too late to act out of love, and acknowledges that time is not infinite.”
— Reviewed by Maria Haskins in her Short Fiction Roundup as a “gorgeous, tender love story … a story of love and regret, but also of hope and joy.”
— Reviewed by Vanessa Fogg in her Short Fiction Recs as “a gorgeous fairy tale of love and of aging, of passing time and life.”
— Chosen by editor Ryka Aoki and series editor Charles Payseur for inclusion in the Neon Hemlock-published anthology WE’RE HERE: THE BEST QUEER SPECULATIVE FICTION OF 2024.
FORTHCOMING
“The Trees and the Frogs and the Sun on the Water”
Tales & Feathers
There’s no such thing as poetry without magic. No such thing as magic without poetry. Even the littlest child chanting couplets to make a kite fly higher knows as much. But some poems—some poets—hold more magic than others.
“Ghost in the Tank”
Lightspeed
In the sim, there’s only you. There’s you, and you, and you: a thousand recorded fights, each one home to a different memory, a different ghost. It’s almost like you never left.
“The Second Life and Sudden Death of the Starveling Saint of Anchorship X1343”
Fusion Fragment
Marguerite does not reply. She pulls her wrinkled and aching hands back to keep from accidentally touching the saint, who is alive, and thinks of her daughter, who is not, and stares at the stars until her eyes begin to water.
“An Hour Like a Breathing-Space”
Baffling
You do not remember goodness or faith or courage. But you remember, dimly, what it was like to be a girl who wrote poetry and wept to see a broken bird upon the path. You were gentle, then. You were kind.