On Spec

New short story in On Spec Magazine!

On Spec issue coverNot quite as big news as my upcoming trilogy, but this is still special for me. I have a brand new short story (okay, novelette, or long short story) published in the current issue (#120, vol 32, no. 2) of On Spec, the fantastic "Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic."

The story is called "Gypsy Biker's Coming Home" and is drawn from the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, off his "Magic" album.

I'm a huge Springsteen fan and have written other stories inspired by his songs, like "Going Down to Lucky Town" (in my collection, Impossibilia) and "Radio Nowhere" (Campus Chills, anthology, 2009).

His "Gypsy Biker's Comin' Home" tells the moving story of a family mourning the death of a son and brother, friend and husband, who has returned from a war, but in a coffin. If you don't know the song (and you should), you can listen to it here and read the lyrics here. It's Springsteen at his political and human and musical best.

Springsteen's ballads are tiny perfect jewels of stories, and this one has so many evocative lines and scenes, it was always calling to me to write something inspired by its characters and their pain and the images he paints.

"Gypsy Biker" also ties into my Merged Corporate Entity universe stories, such as "Scream Angel," "Enlightenment," and "Memories of the Dead Man" (On Spec, Winter 2005, #63 vol.17 No.4).

This is my fourth story to appear in On Spec over the years. My first was way back in 2001 with "The Red Bird," which was a finalist for the Aurora Award. My last appearance in On Spec was in 2014 with "The Walker of the Shifting Borderland," which won the Aurora Award.

This issue also features an interview with yours truly. I hope you'll check out the issue, available to purchase in print or ebook here.

New short story sale to On Spec

On Spec Magazine coverI sold a new short story in November, one I'd written at the start of the pandemic and, aside from a flash piece in late 2019, the first new short story I'd written in a long, long time, since I moved to novels.

"Gypsy Biker's Coming Home," based on the Springsteen song of the same name, will appear in an upcoming issue of the excellent, multi-award winning, and long-running Canadian speculative fiction magazine, On Spec.

The story is set in my Merged Corporate Entity universe, the same setting for many of my other SF stories, including "Scream Angel," "Enlightenment," "Memories of the Dead Man," and "Jigsaw." Those stories garnered three award nominations and one Aurora Award win, so fingers crossed for this one.

This is a long story, almost 10,000 words, and stories at that length are hard to sell. Most markets top-out at 6,000 words. So I was thrilled when long-time Executive Editor Diane Walton said she'd take a look at it even though it was well over their maximum word count..

This will be my fourth appearance in On Spec. Earlier appearances also resulted in two award nominations, plus another Aurora Award win for "The Walker of the Shifting Borderland" (issue's cover pictured here), so again, fingers crossed. This will also be my third Springsteen-inspired story I've had published, the others being "Going Down to Lucky Town" and "Radio Nowhere."

I'll post here when the issue comes out.

Subscribe to RSS - On Spec