DOUGLAS SMITH | Writing the Fantastic

I'm thrilled to have my Aurora Award-winning story, "The Walker of the Shifting Borderland," appear in Black Infinity #4, now available with yet another fantastic retro cover (see right) plus "202 pages chock full of great stories by great writers, weird science, retro movie reviews, comics and so much more."

"The Walker of the Shifting Borderland" first appeared in the excellent Canadian speculative fiction magazine, On Spec, in 2012 and won the Aurora Award for Best Short Fiction the following year.

I've now had a story in each of the first four issues of Black Infinity. This time I get to share the cover with SF greats Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak.

Together with the fiction, the issue also includes columns on retro movies by Matt Cowan, weird science by Todd Treichel, a classic comics story by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, and more.

I hope you'll check the issue out here and pick up a copy.

Cover art by Allen Koszowski.

Wings of Change, a cool new dragon-themed anthology, out now from Camden Park Press, has reprinted my environmental dragon tale (no, really), "The Last of a Thing."

"The Last of a Thing" first appeared in the most excellent Canadian magazine, Pulp Literature, in 2016.

I must admit I was a little concerned when I sold the story to Pulp Literature. Most writers, if they've been doing this long enough, have a "market killer" story, a tale that keeps selling but never gets published because the acquiring magazine or anthology dies before they publish your story.

"The Last of a Thing" was my market-killer. I'd sold the story at least three times in the past but... yeah, well, you get it.

But Pulp Literature continues to publish beautiful issues filled with excellent fiction, so I'm happy to say they survived having the excellent taste to buy my tale .

I hope you'll check out this new anthology, available from all major retailers here. "The Last of a Thing" was a fairly recent sale, so it does not appear in any of my collections nor is it currently available as an individual ebook.

My flash fiction story, "Nothing," has been reprinted in the just-released anthology, Sins and Other Worlds, edited by Eric S.
Fomley. It's a thrill to share the Table of Contents with the likes of
Mike Resnic, Robert Silverberg, Ken Liu, and Kevin J. Anderson.

Here's a summary of the anthology:

Sins and Other Worlds is a dark Science Fiction short story anthology comprising reprint stories from 30 talented authors.

The stories range from deep space, alien planets, alternate realities and beyond. Most stories within are flash fiction interspersed with several longer works from both emerging authors and titans in the field.

The anthology collects some of the best dark sci-fi in recent memory. 

"Nothing" first appeared in my collection 
Chimerascope and
was reprinted in Black Cat Magazine in 2012. 

Sins and Other Worlds is available as an ebook and will shortly be available in a trade paperback edition.

I'm a tad late in posting this one. My award-winning story, "Scream Angel," was reprinted this past summer as the lead story in the anthology, Survivor, edited by J J Pionke and Mary Anne Mohanraj. About the antho:

Speculative fiction is often about a sense of wonder and escapism, but the realities of life and its traumas can make wonder elusive, and escape difficult to even imagine. 

Editors Mary Anne Mohanraj and J J Pionke bring you stories of people who have endured serious emotional and physical challenges, and who have found new paths forward, learning to both survive and thrive.

The authors featured in this anthology offer more than simple catharsis. These are stories that will evoke wonder, yes, but will also inspire us to look up, full of determination, seeing our spirits lifting higher than the stratosphere.

"Scream Angel" first appeared in the anthology Low Port way back in 2003, published by Meisha Merlin and edited by the fine writing team of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. The story won the Aurora Award in 2004 and is often mentioned by fans as their favourite story of mine. 

It was the first of my Merged Corporate Entity stories, which include "Enlightenment" (a sequel to this story), "Memories of the Dead Man," "Murphy's Law," and "Jigsaw." "Scream Angel" also appears in my collection, Chimerascope, and is available as a stand-alone ebook at all major retailers.

I was a guest on the genre writing podcast, The Panic Room, two weeks ago. The podcast episode is now up on YouTube here. My bit starts at about the 19:30 mark.

We chat about my writing, werewolf and shapeshifter movies, my shapeshifter novel The Wolf at the End of the World, Steven King, and baseball, specifically the Blue Jays. I had fun, and if you get a chance, give it a listen.

This is just too cool not to share. In the fall, I contributed free books to help with a GoFundMe campaign that Amazing Stories was running to help them relaunch as a paying fiction magazine.

I'd had one of my first big pro story sales to Amazing when I started writing ("State of Disorder"), and I wrote a column for them when they resurrected as a web presence a few years back. So I have a fond spot for Amazing and was only too happy to help out.

When the campaign ended, the new fiction editor, Ira Nayman, sent me the list of the people who had claimed my offered books, asking me to autograph and personalize the copies (which he kindly shipped to the winners). I was blown away to find that my collection, Impossibilia, had been claimed by none other than Spider Robinson.

Yeah, that Spider Robinson. Winner of the John W. Campbell, Nebula, Robert A. Heinlein, and multiple Hugo awards... and basic science fiction legend.

I signed his copy and included a note saying I'd been a fan of his for years and was thrilled he'd selected one of my books. And there I thought it would end.

A few weeks later, I received an email from Spider, saying how much he was enjoying the stories. Nothing is better than hearing from readers but to get that feedback from a writer you admire is about as good as it gets. He was kind enough to provide the following, which I now proudly display on my website:

"The man is Sturgeon good. Zelazny good. I don’t give those up easy. I’m not certain the man is a Martian—I haven’t yet grokked the fullness—but his name is Smith."

And if I have to tell you who Sturgeon and Zelazny are, or explain the Martian and grok reference, you're probably on the wrong website.