MARIA DEIRA » you’ve got to read this

I Remember by Shane Allison

mdeira — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:02:46 +0000

I won this book by writing a short “I remember” story for Future Tense Books’ “I Remember” Weekend. (I’ll post my submission later. Well, I received it the other day and it’s really good. I think you should spend your money on it!

Inspired by the underground classic, I Remember by Joe Brainard, Shane Allison takes us on a fragmented, lustful, and poetic tour of his life, from a turbulent childhood in Florida to his life in New York City. Allison’s book is an epic poem/memoir full of frozen moments that capture a sexual, cultural, and emotional coming of age.

Strange Horizons fund drive almost over!

mdeira — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:18:12 +0000

And they are soooo close to reaching their goal. If you have a few bucks to spare, please help out! I will think good thoughts about you.

DONATE!

The School by Lavie Tidhar

mdeira — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:50:51 +0000

As soon as I wrote this story I realised I would most likely have to self-publish it. To my delighted surprise, though, an editor at one of the big online magazines offered me, shortly after, to publish it. Two days later, however, the publisher of the same magazine declined the story, not wanting to deal with any potential fallout. I then showed it – unofficially – to a handful of people, and got a potential offer to publish it in another big magazine, if only I were to change some of the references in the story.

I decided, instead, to publish it here.

–Lavie Tidhar

I think this is an excellent story and am sorry that some magazines are afraid of “any potential fallout.” This is what stories should do — challenge us as readers, make us confront our assumptions and expectations, offer us diverse views of the status quo.

Click on the excerpt below to read the full story, and consider donating a couple of bucks to Mr. Tidhar.

My earliest memory is of white men in white coats holding clipboards, examining me. They measured my skull and prodded me with thick pink fingers and made careful notes. There was a war coming, they kept saying, and we had to be prepared.

Because of aliens.

Good Fiction, Free Fiction

mdeira — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:26:20 +0000

Here’s a list of stories from around the web that I think are worth reading:

After October by Ben Burgis @ GigaNotoSaurus

Peerless by Karen Munro @ Strange Horizons

Not so free, but Oh So Good!

I hope you’ve listened to my story “The Giant of Malheur Park” via PodCastle. The reading, by Anna Schwind, was excellent; she made each character and every scene stand out. Brava, Anna!

If you’d like to read the story, hold a copy of it in your hands, look at print on paper, then I suggest you get yourself a copy of Kaleidotrope #10, where “The Giant…” originally appeared.

$5 for the print copy
$2.99 for the ebook

A cappella Zoo, Issue 6

mdeira — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:50:51 +0000

My flash fiction piece “Notes on Cork Tree Babies” has been published in the Spring Issue (#6) of A cappella Zoo.

Issue 6 is now available for order. Only $4 buys you this beautiful literary journal full of prose and poetry:

Cover art by Mark Morgan

So much goodness

mdeira — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 12:23:54 +0000

Not quite ready to get back into the flash fiction project yet, but I’d like to share some recent and new publications.

GigaNotoSaurus – Debut issue with a story by Ruth Nestvold, edited by Ann Leckie

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue #50, November 2010 – New stories by N.K. Jemisine and Genevieve Valentine (I’m a fan!)

Lightspeed Magazine is a fairly new Science Fiction ‘zine edited by the John Joseph Adams

I recently bought the Kindle version of My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, ed. Kate Bernheimer (from the Fairy Tale Review) and with stories by Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, and more. Looking forward to reading it, but I have a couple of other books I need to finish first.