Story release: Traumahead and other sales

Well. I’ve been busy. You know how it goes.

But: a few days ago one of my stories, Traumahead, launched over at Nature magazine. You can check it out over here.

It’s one of the more scientifically denser stories I’ve written, about an alien who’s collecting the memories of his fellow fallen soldiers before their civilization is wiped out by xenocidial humans, and searching for his daughter amoung the wreckage. It’s probably got the highest number of made-up technical jargon I’ve had in a flash piece,  and every sentence had to work double-time to cram the narrative into such a short space. But I’m pretty happy with it, and I got to play with weird and gooey alien biology and fragments of space opera wonder among the darker side of the story. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to sell a first-person story about highly advanced aliens to Nature, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Hope you check it out and enjoy.

Otherwise, a reprint of my “The Bronze Gods” appeared in Grimdark Magazine Issue 16, alongside work from Ed McDonald, Rebecca Kuang and Michael R. Fletcher. Give it a lookesy…

Also, my story “The Galaxy’s Cube” is going to be translated into Estonian by the magazine Reaktor, making it the fourth language the story has appeared in, and almost my most reprinted work. This would be the 10th time it’s been reprinted, methinks. It’s not my favourite story, but all these years later I find it still holds water, and if people want to continue reprinting it, I won’t object.

As always, until later…