Daily Science Fiction is a free e-mail and Web magazine that offers a new science fiction or fantasy story every weekday. Today’s new story on the Web (which went out to e-mail subscribers last week) is my 110-word story “You Can’t Come Here Any More”: you can read it here. Reader Dennis G Williams called this kind of story “snap fiction” on Daily Science Fiction’s Facebook page.

This week Toasted Cake, Tina Connolly’s weekly audio fiction broadcast, features two short stories of mine, “A is for Authority” and “B is for Bureauracy.” This is a series that I’d like to see through to completion some day (just 24 to go!), but frankly the stories are a little exhausting to write, so it may take a while. If you listen, you’ll see why.

I’ve been more energetic about sending out my fiction in recent months, and as a result I’ve been selling more stories, including one upcoming one to Nature, certainly the most widely-read and prestigious magazine I could land in this side of the New Yorker.

I’ve also done a long-overdue update of my bibliography here on the site, so that a nearly-complete list of my published short fiction is now available. Some of the stories are available free to read on the Internet; see the page for links.

Note: It’s only just at this moment that I realize why the initials of Tina’s site are T.C. Alas, I am not always quick on the uptake with these clever subtleties!

My latest flash fiction piece, “RE: The Dark One, In Case It Should Arise from Its Horrible Abyss” is now live on Abyss & Apex. This was a story that arose from a title, though I can’t for the life of me remember how I came up with the title. Based on it, though, a story of corporate maneuvering and interplanar disaster planning quickly emerged. It does not, all in all, bode well for the replacement.

http://www.abyssapexzine.com/2012/03/re-the-dark-one/

From February 24th through March 9th, I’ll be posting a free audio flash fiction story each Friday from my collection Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories. The stories are read by my father, voice, film, and stage actor J. Louis Reid.

Today’s offering is “Hunting for Ernest Hemingway in Kudu Heaven.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Photo by Werner Vermaak

From February 24th through March 9th, I’ll be posting a free audio flash fiction story each Friday from my collection Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories. The stories are read by my father, voice, film, and stage actor J. Louis Reid.

Today’s offering is “The War With the Clowns.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

photo by Talbot Troy, http://elhuecobolivia.blogspot.com

From February 24th through March 9th, I’ll be posting a free audio flash fiction story each Friday from my collection Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories. The stories are read by my father, voice, film, and stage actor J. Louis Reid.

Today’s offering is “The Wave’s Second Day.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Amber Sistla is running a series of well-designed interviews with neopro writers on her Web site every Wednesday, and her latest interview is with me. She asks me about some favorites, which is the kind of question I’m notoriously bad at answering, and throws me some other questions that led me to answers I didn’t expect myself. (For example, my favorite comfort food, which isn’t actually a food.)

You can read the whole interview here.

Some things have changed since Amber did the interview with me last month: for the moment, Futurismic is going semi-dormant, so I contributed my last scheduled “Brain Hacks for Writers Column” for now a couple of weeks ago (“Better Writing Through Writing About Writing“) and will be watching for Futurismic to rise again when publisher Paul Raven is free to return to it. My collection Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories is not available on Smashwords any more at the moment, and my birthday has already passed (it was pretty great, thanks).

My flash fiction collection, Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories, is part of an Amazon Kindle promotion and is free just until December 15th: here’s the link.

“It’s not easy to inject an entire world into one scene, but Reid does that time and time again. The characters, whether they live in one sentence or 20, are real people.”
– David Kopaska-Merkel in his review of Bam! on Dreams & Nightmares

“172 fantasy and science fiction, flash stories … each of them short enough to read in a few minutes, each of them rich, well crafted, meaningful.”
– Deborah Walker in her review of Bam! on Skull Salad Reviews

“thanks to this author’s unfettered imagination, quirky sense of humor, and great touch with twist endings, these short stories provide entertaining and often intriguing micro reading experiences. Highly recommended!”

“Bam! is like a magic pocket that is way bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. You reach in and never know what you’re going to pull out.”

“These stories were funny, memorable, meaningful. Dark chocolate, flashes.”

“Some absolute gems hide in here, such as the ingenious and infinitely anthologize-able ‘The Last Log Entries at the Philadelphia Office of the Centers for Happiness Control.'”

–Amazon.com reviews

“Reid’s smart humor and eye for irony are sure to attract plenty of readers, and keep them perusing the collection at their leisure.  The wit he employs in the stories is perfect for setting up the most poignant of stories … because just as you begin to anticipate more humor, the weight of what is being said sort of sneaks up on you.  It makes for a great read.”
– Shelly Bryant, reviewing Bam! at SlothJockey.com

In celebration of Thanksgiving, here’s a short story in honor of the brave and often delicious turkey, originally published at The Daily Cabal. If this whets your appetite, there are 172 more very short stories of mine in the collection Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories.

“OK, I respect that,” I said to the other turkey, “but if we’re going to have a conversation, I need to give you some kind of name. Why don’t I call you Lashonda?”

“Gobble,” said Lashonda.

A chubby guy in rubber gloves and a rubber apron snatched me up by the feet and hung me upside down.

“Hi!” I said in Turkey, but of course he didn’t understand.

A second later he hung Lashonda up next to me, and we swung gently from side to side as the track we were hanging from carried us into the gloom.

“This feels strangely peaceful,” I said. “Who would’ve imagined? Hanging upside down … it’s so relaxing. It’s a little like grooming. I had an incarnation as a spider monkey once, and we were always grooming each other. Most relaxing thing in the world.”

Up ahead, there was a burst of gobbling that was abruptly cut short. The machine we were swinging from made a gentle creak-creak sound.

“Gobble gobble,” said Lashonda.

“You know, it’s funny you should mention that,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been wondering about: why a turkey in the first place? I mean, we’re raised butt-to-wattle in a pen, fed terrible food, and eventually carted off to be slaughtered. What’s the point in that kind of existence? I’m worried that if I don’t learn anything from this life, I’ll just have to do it all over again.”

We came around a bend, and I saw that the line dipped, lowering turkey heads into a silvery machine. There was an electrical noise somewhere.

“It’s not the same as being a wild creature or a human or whatever,” I said. “As those you can make choices. But what can you possibly learn if you don’t get to make any actual choices?”

Lashonda was silent. I wondered if she was scared.

“I’m probably overthinking it,” I said. “Right now, I just feel grateful, you know? Grateful to be hanging upside down, grateful to have a friend like you right when I need one … I don’t think I’ve ever told you, Lashonda, in the few minutes we’ve known each other, how much I appreciate your company and your level-headed attitude.”

The line began to descend, and all of a sudden the silvery machine was right in front of me.

“Have a nice life, Lashonda,” I said. Then something sparked.

Photo by cyanocorax