Tag Archive for publications

Join me for the Women Who Submit Lit Reading 8/11!

This Saturday afternoon at 4 pm, I’ll be reading at the first ever Women Who Submit Lit Reading! What is Women Who Submit Lit (WWS)? Founded in 2011, WWS seeks to empower women writers by creating physical and virtual spaces for sharing information, supporting and encouraging literary submissions, and clarifying the submission and publication process.

I helm one chapter of WWS in the Bay Area and primarily organize submission parties, where we get together and encourage each other to submit our work out for publication.  Dominica Phetteplace, who passed that duty on to me last year, decided it would be fun to have a reading for our chapter and thus, this reading was born!

Women Who Submit Lit Reading

Women who submit lit bay area

When: Saturday, August 11, 4 pm.

Where: The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St., Oakland

RSVP: Facebook Event

Who: Me, Dominica, Jennifer Ng, MK Chavez, and Simmi Aujli! Bios below.We’re all regular members of this WWS chapter, except MK, who’s starting her own chapter in Fruitvale very soon. Come for more details on that.

And just come! There may be an after party…

Becca Gomez Farrell‘s debut epic fantasy novel, Wings Unseen, was published in August 2017 by Meerkat Press. Her speculative short fiction can be read in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, the Future Fire, and Dark Luminous Wings. Becca also blogs about food, drink, and travel at theGourmez.com.

Jennifer Ng is a writer in San Francisco. She recently published a nonfiction book, Ice Cream Travel Guide, and is working on a novel based on her grandparents’ lives in China, Peru, and the United States. Her work has appeared in Arkana, Havik, Cold Creek Review, Shut Up and Write! Zine, and Airplane Reading. In her writing, she explores identity and relationships. If she was asked about her favorite hobby at the age of 8, she would have answered “observing”, which is still a joy and an inspiration for storytelling. Read more at jennism.com or follow her on twitter: @jennism.

Simmi Aujla is an Indian-American speculative fiction writer based in the Bay Area. She is an alum of the VONA / Voices of Our Nation workshop, where she studied genre fiction. A 2018 fellow at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, in the fall she will attend an interdisciplinary arts residency at Marble House Project. Simmi is a Brown alum and former journalist, with experience at Politico, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press. Keep up with her at www.simmiaujla.com.

Oakland based Latinx writer Mk Chavez is the author of Mothermorphosis and Dear Animal, (Nomadic Press.) She is a recipient of a 2017 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award and her poem The New Whitehouse, Finding Myself Among the Ruins was selected by Eileen Myles for the Cosmonauts Avenue 2017 Poetry Award. She is a co-founder/curator of the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, a fellow with CantoMundo, a writer in residence at Alley Cat Books, and this fall she will be the guest curator of the reading series at UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Dominica Phetteplace is a math tutor who writes literary and science fiction. Her work has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld and F&SF. She has won a Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Award, a Barbara Deming Award and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, I-Park, and Marble House Project.

Need Gift Ideas? Give the gift of (my) fiction!

Hey, it’s not a holiday season without an obligatory “Buy My Work!” post from an author. I swear it’s in the contracts we sign in blood with our publishers…somewhere…I seem to have misplaced them.

Oh, I think I remember how...

Oh, I think I remember where…

In 2015, I added two new opportunities to purchase my work, which is one way of saying some very lovely people agreed to include me in their collections — some even paid me for it! One is a short story in a magazine and one is a contribution to a cookbook…a cookbook with quite illustrious co-contributors from the Speculative Fiction galaxy. Being a member of a professional organization comes with some perks, just sayin’.

Consider this my purchasable compendium, reverse chronological order! Collect all five! And come this time next year, there will be a novel to add to this list, one way or another…

1. Ad Astra: The 50th Anniversary SFWA Cookbook

Fran Wilde and Cat Rambo edited this collection of 150+ recipes from speculative fiction authors of the past, present, and maybe even future. In it, you can find my Seared Peaches with Prosciutto and Basil; it comes with high acclaim from the NC Research Triangle area spec fic community. Purchase the cookbook from the SFWA website here or from Amazon.

2. “Thlush-A-Lum” in PULP Literature Issue #5

“Thlush-A-Lum” is pure horror that would qualify as flash fiction in most markets. The story came about when I challenged myself to write something more focused on the sense of sound than the other four I more commonly use in my writing. Many of those sounds are inspired by what I could hear from my own Southern bedroom window…and a few sounds that I swear I’ve been able to hear no matter where I’ve lived.

Purchase Issue #5 from the PULP Literature website or from Amazon.

3. “Blow ‘Em Down” from Beneath Ceaseless Skies Double Anniversary Issue #131

beneath ceaseless skies

“Blow ‘Em Down” is the story I describe as a steampunk retelling of the Battle of Jericho with a jazzy feel circa Harlem Renaissance. It’s been taught in a college class and brought me some of my highest compliments, so I certainly think it’s worth the read. Beneath Ceaseless Skies is not available in print, but the e-magazine can be purchased through Weightless Books or on Amazon.

4. “Bother” in Bull Spec #5

“Bother” was the cover story for Bull Spec #5, and I’m honored to this day that the highly regarded Richard Case chose to illustrate it. It’s urban fantasy about how a couple survives, or doesn’t, when a dragon comes to roost on their city block. Luckily, there appears to still be back issues of Bull Spec available, although the magazine has shifted to a web-only presence. Order Issue #5 here or an e-version from Weightless Books here.

5. Maya’s Vacation

The contemporary romance novella I never expected write, Maya’s Vacation came to be in a dream about frying chicken, and I fleshed that dream out into the story of a woman in her fifties rediscovering herself after a divorce and relearning what she used to love through food, paint, and an old flame returned. Maya’s Vacation, published by Clean Reads, is available on Amazon. Warning: No sex scenes in this romance! Just unrequited longing. Or is it requited? I’ll never tell.

I may also mention that anything you buy that features my work is a gift to me as well — word of tongue can only spread after eyes on the page have done their business. Of course, I also have plenty of fiction free to read online as well — just click over to the Creative section to find it. Thank you for your support, and I hope to keep entertaining you in the future. I’m pretty sure I’ll have some snippets to share by the end of next week as well…

Happy holidays, from me and Ben!

Happy holidays, from me and Ben!