Congratulations to SF Canada member C.J. Lavigne! Her short story “Cenotaph” has been published in Augur Magazine’s Issue 4.2, “Woe and Wonder”.
See a preview here:
No comments
Tag: short stories
Through the Labyrinths of the Mind by Bevan Thomas
SF Canada member Bevan Thomas has just successfully concluded a Kickstarter campaign for the graphic anthology, Through the Labyrinths of the Mind, from Cloudscape Comics.
Along with writer and artist Hanna Lou Myers, Bevan co-edited this timely project in which a wide range of British Columbia comic creators explore their struggles with mental health issues.
Each of
Labyrinths’ stories explores mental health in a unique and personal way. Many are memoirs in which the cartoonists candidly describe their own struggles, while others take inspiration from their creators’ experiences to tell fictional stories in numerous genres, ranging from realistic slice-of-life dramas to tales of magic and fantasy. The stories present mental health issues through a wide variety of symbolism – OCD as a host of whispering gremlins, depression as a suffocating black mass, anxiety a mask to hide your true self. In all cases, the chosen genre and symbolism are the ones that best capture the particular cartoonist’s psychological truth, sharing with the reader their own internal journey.
For a full list of contributors and more detail about this anthology, visit the Kickstarter page.
Bevan is a writer, editor, and creative writing teacher best known for his involvement with Cloudscape Comics, BC’s largest comics collective. His work has also appeared in the anthologies Beyond and Superhero Universe: Tesseracts 19, and the magazine Pulp Literature. Bevan teaches writing for comics and comic book history in Langara College’s Graphic Novel & Comix program.
Learn more about Bevan’s work at www.bevanthomas.ca.
Copies of Through the Labyrinths of the Mind will soon be available through Cloudscape Comics.
To Well and Truly Serve by Geoffrey W. Cole
Earlier this year, SF Canada member Geoffrey W. Cole had a story appear in Cosmic Horror Monthly.
“To Well and Truly Serve” was originally written as a James Bond story for the Licence Expired anthology and now stars Julie Bonenfant.
Geoffrey W. Cole was born in Ottawa, Ontario, where he learned to swim and to survive 233K (-40 C or F) weather. After this larval stage, he moved to Kingston, Ontario, where he received degrees in Biology, Mechanical Engineering, Beer Slinging, and Rock and/or Roll. Geoff also met his mate in Kingston. After graduating they embarked on a trans-Canada road trip from Newfoundland to Alaska (for you future-bots reading this, from RockScar to The Beaches). After a brief stint in Ontario, Geoff and his mate moved to Vancouver, BC, where they married, started a home, adopted a giant Newfoundland Lab cross, and gave birth to a wonderful son. They spent a year abroad in Rome, Italy, and after the vandemic of 2017 (curse you, sentient minivans!) they moved to SeaBase 4 off the coast of Haida Gwaii to breed orca.
For more about Geoffrey’s work, visit his website at geoffreywcole.wordpress.com.
Read “To Well and Truly Serve” at cosmic-horror.net.
Issue 17 of Polar Borealis Available for Download
The latest issue of Polar Borealis, edited by SF Canada member R. Graeme Cameron, has just been published.
Discover poetry from SF Canada members Jean-Louis Trudel, Lisa Timpf, and Melanie Marttila along with fiction from Paula Johanson.
Both Polar Borealis and the new Polar Starlight are open to poetry and fiction submissions until February 28, 2021. The latter is a new Canadian poetry magazine edited by Rhea E. Rose.
Download Issue 17 for free. Visit polarborealis.ca to view back issues and find more information about this paying market.
Hacker Chess & Other Stories by Robert Runté
SF Canada member Robert Runté has been busy in recent months with several stories (new and reprinted) out in the world now.
Most recently, “Ransom and the Christmas Tree,” appeared on Abyss and Apex magazine’s website in December, just in time for the holidays.
“Ransom hesitated, because surely this wasteland wasn’t where one came to cut Christmas trees. Whole sections were just naked sticks, and even the few scattered pines that were struggling to hang on were more grey than green. The blight was so blatant, one didn’t need fae senses to see that the whole hillside was a scarred ruin.”
“The Missing Elephant,” originally published in the anthology, They Have to Let You In, was republished by Coastal Shelf magazine in their inaugural November 2020 issue.
“Hacker Chess,” came out in Centropic Oracle on November 20, 2020 as an audio production read by Larissa Thompson. This story originally appeared in the anthology The Playground of Lost Toys, edited by fellow SF Canada member Ursula Pflug and Colleen Anderson in 2015. “Hacker Chess,” was also reprinted in Exile Literary Quarterly 39(3) in 2016.
And “Detour on the Eightfold Path” appeared in NeoOpsis #31, also in November 2020. This story is the fourth to feature Robert’s characters Fami and Julia.
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.
One Bad Apple & Other Stories by Holly Schofield
SF Canada member Holly Schofield has been busy with some new short story publications recently.
The No Police = Know Future anthology examines worlds where funding for police is redirected to other social services. The publisher, Amazing Selects (a division of Experimenter Publishing which publishes the 94-year-old Amazing Stories magazine), says it’s a “unique showcase for our authors’ creativity and problem-solving capabilities, offering much food for thought. It will get you to think, to engage, to understand that this genre is a tool for exploring, examining and, hopefully, helping us to discover the kind of futures we desire.”
In the near-crimeless and heavily surveilled world of Holly’s story, “One Bad Apple”, a protective father has to make some tough choices when he and his young daughter are confronted by a mugger.
Get No Police = Know Future from Amazing Stories today in print or ebook.
Another of Holly’s stories, “Stubborn as Dirt”, is about rewilding a marsh — a school science project gone wrong! — and appears in And Lately, the Sun.
This 20-tale solarpunk anthology, probes at “how we could build a working world using the resources available to us – the natural, the social, the political, and the technological”. It’s published by Calyx Create Group, an international team of writers, science fiction enthusiasts, media types, and people who don’t want to see humanity crash and burn. The group is registered in Australia as a non-profit association for the purpose of supporting, generating, and disseminating creative works on themes of science, technology and the future.
Details on ordering And Lately, the Sun, and audio excerpts (including one from Holly’s “Stubborn as Dirt”), are here: https://latelythesun.com/ .
When Holly saw the submissions call for the Magic Pens anthology, she knew she had to write a story for it. The result was “Writ Large”, a surprisingly timely tale of the creation of a “new normal” and a possible way to vastly improve the world.
This eclectic, multi-genre collection of original stories is about the power of communication, the magic of writing instruments, and the strength of community, curated to inspire wonder, hope, and joy.
Treat yourself to the ebook or the print version of Magic Pens today!
A more literary look at what we are doing to the environment is Holly’s story “Passengers All”. An otter investigates an abandoned ferry and uncovers some universal truths. Find it in the October 2020 issue of Honeyguide Literary Magazine.
Environmental concerns are not the only topic Holly writes about. In “Reaching Up, Reaching Back”, familial relationships are examined through the lens of time travel. This story was recently reprinted in The Trouble with Time Travel from Smoking Pen Press.
Holly Schofield is the author of over eighty short stories. Her works are used in university curricula, have been translated into multiple languages, and have appeared in Analog, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, the Aurora-winning Second Contacts, and many other publications throughout the world. She hopes to save the world through science fiction and homegrown heritage tomatoes.
Find Holly at hollyschofield.wordpress.com.
And be sure to watch for Holly’s upcoming stories in the Fix the World anthology, the Very Much Alive anthology, and Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine!