Author: Holly Schofield

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Fiction and Poetry from Lisa Timpf

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SF Canada member Lisa Timpf  has been busy lately!

Her story, “A Cat’s Confession”, about a ship’s cat serving aboard the Galactic Space Ship Meech Lake plus two poems inspired by her cat, Smokey, recently appeared in the anthology From A Cat’s View. This unique anthology offers fascinating insights into the relationship between humans and their feline owners. Pick up a copy at Post to Print Publishers — it’s the purrrfect gift for cat lovers everywhere.

Her short story, “The Caller”, appears in the Future Days anthology issued by Castrum Press.

New Myths has published a story and a poem by Lisa. “Gone” is about an AI-enhanced dog looking for a missing master and “What Really Happened” is a different take on the Gingham Dog and Calico Cat. Read both for free at New Myths.

Her poem entitled “With Two Left Feet” appears in the Tesseracts anthology Nevertheless. In connection with that book’s promotion, Lisa contributed to their “Bright Spots” blog with a piece entitled “Step By Step” that draws on her recovery from knee surgery.

A sci-fi short story entitled “What Lies Beneath” was included in Nomadic Delirium’s November 2018 edition of Environmental Holocaust. The story follows the efforts of a Hamilton-based researcher to combat the spread of a virus.

A sci-fi poem entitled “History Waits to be Written” was published in Polar Borealis #7.

And her sci-fi poem “Ghost Stories” was included in the Sounds of the Night anthology from Alban Lake Publishing.

Lisa’s writing has appeared in a variety of other venues, including Star*Line, Eye to the Telescope, Thema, and Third Flatiron. Find her at http://lisatimpf.blogspot.com/.

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Uncanny’s Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction issue!

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SF Canada member Dominik Parisien serves as fiction co-editor for this very special edition of Uncanny magazine.

Why destroy science fiction? Because disabled people have been discarded from the narrative, cured, rejected, villainized. We’ve been given few options for our imaginations to run wild within the parameters of an endless sky.

This issue destroys those narratives and more.

As with the previous Destroy projects (Women, Queers, People of Colour), Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction takes the rallying cry of We are here and Our stories matter and looks to the future. The other projects all began by “destroying” science fiction, and this one is no different. By turning our attention to the future, we are able to explore concerns and realities in the present and amplify them, correct them, highlight the ways they might become better or worse if allowed to continue on their present course. Through science fiction, marginalized people are able to say, We are here, now, and we will be there later, too.

But it is not just enough to talk about disability. It is not enough to just say that we are here, that we will be there later. We need to remember that we are people, too. The disabled artists in this issue are not just disabled people, as so many would boil disability down to a single trait. These are fully actualized individuals, living at the intersections and axes of identities. Queer, nonbinary, Jewish, black, PoC, Christian, straight. We are all of these things and we are disabled. Disability itself means different things to different people. We are not a monolith.

Throughout the stories, nonfiction, and poetry in Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, you will encounter narratives and experiences that may be familiar, or not. Perhaps some disabled readers or writers will encounter an experience they recognize, but handled slightly differently than their own. No one experience of disability is the disability experience. Many of the themes dealt with by our authors could, and likely would, be handled in radically different ways by other disabled authors. And that’s the point. The Destroy projects are important to the field because they amplify the work of a specific demographic at a specific point in time, but they are only a small part of what needs to be an ongoing conversation. We need more of those narratives, with a broad range of experiences.

Now available from Uncanny as .pdf, .epub, or .mobi.

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November 21st launch of Chasing the Banyan Wind

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Mark your calendars! SF Canada member Bernadette Dyer ‘s novel, Chasing the Banyan Wind, will be officially launched on Nov 21st, 2018, at 61 Heintzman Street in Toronto at 6:00pm (Heintzman Place).

This historical novel is published by LMH Publishing.

In the mid 1920s an English family, Jonathan and Wilemina Gunn, and their two young children, Dunstan and Eliza emigrate to the  Caribbean island of Jamaica. With help from locals they build a home in a remote rural location on the island’s north coast. Previous perceptions of the island do  not prepare them for the reality of the island’s diverse Englishspeaking population that includes Negroes, East Indians, Chinese, Jews, Europeans and Syrians.

This haunting saga exposes race relations, social class distinctions and alliances in a multi-ethnic society, that goes beyond the  unforgiving landscape of war, turmoil, hardships and passions that proliferate even beyond Jamaica’s shores. A sweeping historical novel that addresses World War II, and the involvement of the Commonwealth nations’ allegiance to the ‘Mother  Country’ while taking us on an unforgettable journey that gives credence to the saying, that the more things change, the more they  remain the same.

Chasing the Banyan Wind is available at Amazon, Indigo, Barnes & Noble, and the Toronto library system.

Congratulations, Bernadette!

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The Art of Dying poetry collection

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SF Canada member Sarah Tolmie’s second collection of poems is a traditional ars moriendi, a how-to book on the practices of dying. Confronting the fear of death head-on, and describing the rituals that mitigate it, the poems in The Art of Dying take a satirical look at the ways we explain, enshrine, and, above all, evade death in contemporary culture.

Some poems are personal—a parent tries to explain to a child why a grandfather is in hospital, or stages a funeral for a child’s imaginary friend – while others comment on how death figures in the news, on TV, and in social media. Some poems ask if there is any place left for poets in our rituals of memory and commemoration. A few examine the apocalyptic language of climate change. Others poke fun at the death-defying claims of posthumanism.

A thoughtful and irreverent collection about serious concerns, The Art of Dying begins and ends with the fact of death, and strips away our euphemisms about it. The book is available through McGill-Queen’s University Press , Indigo, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Find more of Sarah’s poetry and fiction at her website.

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A Body of Work now released!

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SF Canada member Colleen Anderson‘s first solo collection, A Body of Work, was launched by Black Shuck Books at Fantasycon earlier this year. It features sixteen of Colleen’s dark fiction, split into two sections:

MIND OVER MATTER: eight stories examine dark obsessions, consuming lust and the consequences of choices that can twist the mind to its own desires or bring release.
UNDER THE SKIN: eight stories where the quest to master devices, environment or worlds leads to battles of survival that devour or shape into something new.

Savory teeth, sentient insects, deadly automatons, VR worlds, ensorcelled blades, nanotech healing, possessive fungus, gingerbread people, prophetic soap bubbles and more: this Body of Work is a stitchery of tales, a strange creature that is alluring, disturbing and thought-provoking.

A Body of Work is available through Black Shuck Books and Amazon.

Watch for upcoming launch events, soon to be announced on Colleen’s blog.

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New ways to enjoy Scott Overton’s fiction

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SF member Scott Overton recently used his 30 years of experience as a broadcaster to convert some of his fiction to audio. His mystery/thriller novel about the radio industry, Dead Air, is now available in audio format from Audible.

When radio morning man Lee Garrett receives a death threat he shrugs it off as a prank, until harassment turns into outright attempts on his life. Then the deadliest attack yet claims an innocent victim and Garret knows he must force a confrontation with his persecutors.

Scott has also been busy with his short fiction. Fifteen of Scott’s science fiction and fantasy short stories  available in  e-book form via the anthologies Disastrous!, Body Of Opinion and other stories plus the series Beyond: The Stars, Beyond: Time, and Beyond: Technology are now gathered together into one paperback. BEYOND: Stories Beyond Time, Technology, and the Stars is now available to buy in print form through Amazon and other online retailers. Your favourite independent bookstore can also order it through the book distributor Ingram.

Find more fiction at Scott’s website, including free stories.