Signal Boost: Queer reprint anthology

britmandelo is editing a reprint anthology of bisexual and genderqueer speculative fiction for Lethe Press. Details here. Please stop by and recommend your favorite queer stories, or submit a reprint if you have one. I may dust off "Flotsam."

Procrastinate all the things

I'm trying to clean my kitchen and dining room in between trying to name characters, but I have a bad case of donwanna. And so I turn to a question meme courtesy of ultharkitty.

1. What do you enjoy most about climbing?

A good chunk of its appeal is that it's a physical activity I can do in an air-conditioned sunless place, while being a million times more interesting than reps at a gym. It requires thought as well as strength and stamina, and encourages technique over brute strength. And getting to the top of a wall gives me way more endorphins than any other exercise I've tried. Also, climbing gyms are full of eye-candy.

2. What are you currently reading?

I'm nearly finished with A Dance With Dragons, rereading The Tombs of Atuan, and have just started A Rope of Thorns.

3. From your own stories, what are your favourite opening lines?

I'm still partial to Dreams' old opening: In her dreams she drowned. Sadly, the opening chapters have since been reworked and I lost the line. I also like She watches from her tower as the sky burns, which is the first line of the queen-in-a-tower story that I would love to finish one day. In fact, I think I'll do the first line meme after this, after I clean a little more.

4. What's on the top shelf of your fridge?

Lemon pudding, cream, salsa, harissa, olives, and more jam than I know what to do with.

5. What's your most productive location for writing?

The living room, in a comfy chair with my laptop.

Okay, I will clean more now, and then do another meme. It's important to pace oneself, after all.

I don't really care what gentlemen prefer

Behold! The return of the first lines meme! For those of you unfamiliar, these are the first lines of all my unfinished works in progress. The meme often has the happy side effect of dislodging a stuck story, or reminding you of an old project.

Some of these short stories have been stalled for years, but I haven't given up hope yet.

Changeling Hearts

The girl whose name was not Aletheia Rampion woke to thunder, and the surety that something was wrong.

Dreams of Shreds & Tatters

Halloween night, and parties staggered down Granville Street--clubs full of costumes, sequins and feathers, masks and paint. People dressed in shiny new skins, searching for opportunities to shed them. Groping hands and sticky candy kisses, tricks and treats in darkened corners.

Mist & Chill

The Terminal is a dive on its best day.

Oracle of Plagues

The horn blew an hour before dawn. A conch's mournful drone--one call, then silence. The oracle was dead.

Pinion

Lilah runs and darkness follows.

Prayers to Broken Stone

Springtime in Paris—the cruelest month come and gone, but storms still linger. Rain washes the city, speeding the Seine in its rush to the sea. In the Left Bank, it pours from the gutters and drips from curling wrought iron balconies to splash the cobbles below. Moisture darkens white walls, new paint and plaster over centuries-old bones. On rue du Four, water drums against the awnings outside Les Vieux Os and falls in shining ribbons to the flooded pavement.

Shadowhand

The stallion came with the dawn, and the rising sun flung his shadow before him over the cracked and dusty ground.

Spiral

The sky hangs dark and swollen overhead, scraping its belly over the spires of Prague. Bianca pauses to wipe her boots on the mat, groceries balanced on her hip. The rain has slacked, of course, now that they've reached the apartment. Water trickles through her hair, warm by the time it drips down her neck and under her collar. She really should buy an umbrella.

"Birthgrave"

The storm hadn't broken by midnight, and neither had Ziya's fever. Isyllt slouched on the floor beside the sweat-stained mattress, listening to her friend's harsh breath through the rush of wind and rain and distant thunder, the steady drip of the leaking roof. Winter had finally left Erisín, but so far spring had proven no kinder.

"Flood"

Nan doesn't mean to fall asleep--she never does. But Evie's soft breath and the steady creak of the ceiling fan lull her, till her eyes sag and the worn paperback slides from her fingers.

"Music From A Farther Room"

Alex found his wife waiting on the threshold, at the divide between memory and dream. He was used to finding her here, one of the many memory-ghosts to haunt these halls. But this was different. The door she stood in was one he couldn't cross.

"Rain Dogs"

Nathan Killerlain is having a bad night.

All his nights have been bad since his luck broke, and he anticipates no change any time soon. No change for the better, at least.

"Serpentskirt"

All Souls Night and the gutters still brim with shed Hallows skin. Broken glass crunches under Jane's boots as she carries an amp to the van, glittering beside limp feathers and cracked sequins, tattered black and orange fliers. One hell of a party, she heard--Sixth Street is still subdued and sleepy. But even for the day after Halloween and a Monday to boot, the crowd is still better than last night's in Dallas.

"Shoggoth With Grace Notes"

Tuesdays are music lessons.

"Snakebit"

The horses are restless.

The sound of snorts and hooves tangles through Lanie's nightmares, familiar dreams of fire and smoke. She wakes with a start, sweat sticky on her neck and back. Beside her, Merle stirs with a muffled curse as one of the horses whinnies.

"Teneral"

"Take off your mask," the arachne tells me.

Sometimes they ask, the johns and janes, but I didn't expect it from this one. I don't know what to expect from this one. She tilts her head, maybe smiling. Hard to tell in the storm-shuttered gloom. "Please," she adds, mocking-sweet.

"Waiting For the Train"

When it's raining here, you hear the trains. You hear them other times too, with the tracks so close, but the dusty heat of summer bakes the sound out of the air, till it gets buried under cars and trucks and TVs and voices and all the other small-town noises. But when the rain comes, and the trains come, the whistles carry all over, low and mournful and rumbling in my chest.

Untitled Queen in a Tower Story

She watches from her tower as the sky burns.

Untitled Hotel Carcosa Story

A stranger has come to Carcosa.

The news hisses and bubbles through the city's whisper-stream, from tunnels to alleys to rookeries, pleasure gardens to cathedrals. Any new face is cause for gossip, but these rumors fly faster than most. This arrival has already attracted the attention of the Bacchante, and the Leather Men as well.

Untitled Asenath Waite Story

I wait in the mud and dark for the oracle to come.