Short Story Reader #11 - Over Moonlit Clouds by Coda Audeguy-Pegon

I love short stories. I rarely find the time to read short stories. This daily series of blog posts is my attempt to read and examine at least one piece of shorter fiction per day. This is the first piece of original fiction in Apex Magazine $136. I’ve never seen lycanthropy treated this way – as a genetic condition, and a source of most bitter prejudice in a way much more banal, and more human…

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I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

Short Story Collections for Learning Japanese

Short stories are very popular with language learners – and rightly so. Being able to finish even a short tale aimed at native speakers will feel like a great accomplishment.

I had a look at three approaches for intermediate and advanced learners to enjoy Japanese short stories. For each I can also recommend a few matching short story collections:

Short Stories in Easy Japanese

Japanese Short Stories with English Annotations

Parallel Readers

I give my more detailed thoughts on all these short story collections for learning Japanese in my blog post. You can find it here:

Happy New Year, everyone! I thought it would be fun to do a little retrospective on the game's progress over the last year... Shepherds of Haven has grown so much from the little demo I posted in January 2018, and it continues to steadily build and flourish in so many different and exciting ways! Here's a look at just some of the things we accomplished in 2023!

I added 143,151 words to the game (2.5 main chapters, 8 new character interludes) in 2023: the equivalent of writing the longest Lord of the Rings book in one year! We also broke our huge 1 million word milestone—without including code—meaning Shepherds of Haven is now officially twice as long as War and Peace, and almost as long as the entire 7-book Harry Potter series... and all in a single game!

A lot goes into game creation behind the scenes, including the coordination and creation of visual assets for the game—like character cards, codex entries, maps, portraits, and backgrounds—fun stuff for the fans (like the MC info template we created), and songs for the official soundtrack. As the game creeps slowly and determinedly towards its initial completion, that also means learning new things as a solo developer to prepare for the future, like learning to build an official website, researching business and tax practices, and beginning to think about how to conduct testing, publishing, and marketing down the road. Much of what I enumerate here hasn't been made public yet and will continue to cook in the background for a while, but I'm very proud of the work I've gotten done this year and will be excited to unveil more in the future!

And of course, for even more Shepherds of Haven content, I've added and completed even more stories for our little library on Patreon (which also has sizable word count at this point): The Bridge of Bones (a Trouble and Riel murder mystery), O Happy Dagger (a dark adventure featuring Briony, Chase, and Red), and The Hunt (a wild tale involving Tallys, Halek, Shery, and new kinds of spirits, fey magic, and Elves) were all serial stories completed in 2023, while Some Kind of Virus is a cyberpunk zombie apocalypse AU that will continue to be updated with new chapters monthly.

A full list of the Shepherd short stories and serial novellas (with links) can be viewed here!

I hope you enjoyed this session of Shepherds of Haven Wrapped! Honestly, this doesn't actually cover everything I've been working on, but some things can't be packaged and listed out neatly, or otherwise won't seem very interesting to anyone else but me! 😂 As we inch through Chapter 9 and get more interludes done (only a few more main chapters to go), I'm hopeful that I'll also be able to find time to work on my next novel, but we'll see if the Shepherds schedule ends up ramping up or settling down as we work steadily towards finishing the main story!

One important thing before wrapping up is to acknowledge your guys' role in this wonderful, wild journey. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you for your invaluable contributions to the development of Shepherds of Haven. Whether you took the time to share links to the game, supported its growth on Discord or Patreon, left encouraging messages or asked interesting questions, reported bugs, or showcased your remarkable works of fanfiction or fanart, I am sincerely thankful for the unwavering support from this amazing community! Your collective efforts have played a pivotal role in shaping the world of the game into what it is today. Words cannot adequately convey my gratitude for your support, and I am truly blessed to have such a passionate community surrounding this project.

As we step into 2024, I am filled with anticipation for the developments awaiting Shepherds of Haven. Big things are on the horizon, and I am so excited to share these experiences with you! Thank you for being an integral part of this journey, and here's to the continued growth of our shared little world. Cheers to 2024—may it be a year filled with creativity, adventure, and joy! 🎊

Paleolithic Media Catalogue

Hello everyone :) Short story first: When I began brainstorming for my prehistoric story, I started wondering what other prehistoric fiction there is out there. I was not familiar with it and have not seen much. That's when I started my grand literature review and began a search for what fiction exist out there. I wanted to know what kinds of stories are being made with this time period. What are the common themes or recurring ideas (I found lots of humans and dinosaurs works. And time travel). Since I've had a growing collection on my computer, I decided I should keep on enlarging it and put it online. It's nowhere near complete. I'll slowly keep accumulating the collection as I find more. I only have fiction books and comics right now. I still need to work on the film section.

You can access the blog here!

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As for where I am in my reading, the one's I've finished reading are Earth's Children series (book 1-4. Dropped it afterwards lol. I made a post on with fanart) Dance of the Tiger and it's sequel Singletusk (They were good! I'll upload my review on the blog), and Sisters of the Wolf (It was ok!). I got my hands on The Inheritors and excited to start reading it. I REALLY want to read the Shiva trilogy, but I found no PDF online... and it's out of print :( There is certainly old copies on ebay. And I want to read Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. There seem to be lots of good books out there.

lil handwritten notes in thrifted books <33

2024 reads / storygraph

Everything Under the Moon

Anthology of queer reimaginings of fairytales by mostly Australian authors

various genres, from contemporary to fantasy and sci-fi, mostly about older teens

mlm, sapphic, trans, nonbinary, demi, bi ace, and aromantic characters, some stories focusing on romance but many on familial relationships and siblings

sylvia plath’s short stories (book: johnny panic and the bible of dreams)

i feel this in my soul

Solarpunk-Review: Soylent Green is People! by Carlos Orsi

Preface: I asked a couple of months ago, whether people would be interested to read reviews of different Solarpunk shortstories, given that I have collected quite a few Solarpunk anthologies. And several people said, they were. (Shoutout to @solarpunkpresentspodcast!) Hence I am going to start posting a review once or twice a week now. I will start by reviewing the stories from Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable world, given that this anthology is very much part of the beginning of Solarpunk as a genre. Though this means too, that certain ideas of Solarpunk might not be quite as thought through yet.

Summary

The nameless protagonist is a private detective. When a well-known and rich engineer dies by suicide and his mother disappears, several people want to either see the mother found or the death confirmed. After all, there is a considerable heritage to speak about. A heritage that both the engineer's girlfriend, and the mother's church want to lay claim to.

General Review

As it is so often with detective stories that hinge on a big mystery, it is quite hard to review this story, without going too far into spoiler territory. And given this story relies on the central mystery to keep you going (especially as it is fairly long for a short story), I will not spoil it.

It was kinda funny how this story very much did feel like a noir story, though I might note that I really could have done without the attractiveness of female characters being a topic that somehow had to be brought up against and again throughout this story. And while the female characters were not exactly sexualized, with each of them (even the missing 90yo mother) attractiveness was a thing that was brought out.

The mystery itself worked really good though. I was invested in it and the final twist was a good one, that I quite enjoyed. Now, I could point out one major plothole in there - but it is not one that I can talk about without spoiling the story. So just know: Something about the end of the story leaves open a big plothole that to me was not properly answered.

The Solarpunk Factor

Let me talk about the aspect, that I want to bring up in all of these reviews: How Solarpunk is this story?

And honestly, to me the point where it lost me in this regard is the very beginning, where the story brings up that the missing mother was disabled, and it goes: "Could you believe that? She totally chose to be disabled!!!" Because we quickly learn, that basically in this world nobody really is disabled, given that with cybertech and genetech most disabilities have been healed. And while the story at times feels at least somewhat critical of this societal pressure to get yourself cured - and also have your looks changed through genetech - it was this fact that really did not make this story feel Solarpunk to me.

Honestly, in general I got to say that for several reasons (some of which again are very essential to the reveal, hence I will not spoil them) this story felt as if it was set more in a very eco-friendly biopunk world, rather than anything I would consider actually Solarpunk. Partly, too, because we also quickly learn that this world is definitely one of capitalism still.

the lodger's new roommate or the lodger's old roommate, a tale of woe

i mounted them using the forty pound command strips and the lodger ripped them down thrice. message received

also, i'm into site specific maps lately and thinking a lot about hand drawn maps. i drew a map of the roads between my girlfriend's house and mine and i like how it turned out

i treated myself to early solstice presents this week: fancy new earbuds that sound so good, new trail shoes, a pink krink k-42 with an opacity that will make you swoon, and a t-shirt by an artist i like. i am still struggling with wanting stuff

i hosted all four of finn's cats yesterday while pest control treated their building. we had a nice visit. kreg keeps saying she wants to live here but i know she would miss her finnie

it got in the high fifties yesterday. i opened all my windows to let the fresh air flow and did a big clean. it was such a pretty day

i have been writing more poems lately. they are built like tiny verbal wunderkammer and filled with bright treasures i find on my rambles. i think, with practice, they are getting better

i'm making cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and roasted chicken this weekend. a makeup dinner for the traditional thanksgiving feast i missed last month

this year has been so packed full of change for me. a struggle that has plagued me for the last four years ended in a most dramatic way. a brutal passage that i survived, mostly, intact. i wish it could have ended some other way, but at least now, it's finally over

hi!! do you have by any chance any collection of japanese short stories, or just any japanese short story, to recommend? (children literature is also welcome!)

Thanks for the ask! My favourite short story collection in simple Japanese is definitely the series どんどん読める！日本語ショートストリーズ by the publisher アルク.

There are three books in this series and it's the only Japanese short stories collection for learners of which I liked both the stories and the overall structure of the book. As you can see in the sample below, every kanji is accompanied by furigana, making it easier to read, and there are annotations for vocabulary above N3 and idioms.

I've added affiliate links to Amazon Japan, but you can also get these books through other shipping services like CDJapan or most shops that also sell Japanese textbooks.

The Lottery and other stories by Shirley Jackson

I savoured this short story collection in small bites during the last month and I am finally done with it. I had already read a few stories included in the edition that my friend kindly got me at Shakespeare & co. There were ups and downs in this book for me personally. Overall I would say that I was reminded of how Shirley Jackson is able to instill a very specific kind of anxiety, which is insane. It's always that feeling that you have no control over mundane things, that people around you are somewhat plotting against you, that somehow everyone knows something you don't. On paper it sounds like something that should trigger me way more than it actually does when I am reading her stuff, which just tells you how good of a writer she is. I will not talk about all the stories, I would inevitably end up spoiling them which is not the goal her so here's a little list in no particular order of the ones I liked the most: The Lottery, The Witch, Nightmare, Journey With a Lady, The Order Of Charlotte's Going, The Very Stange House Next Door. The other stories in the collection didn't do much for me, but I understand it's pretty personal. What I can overall say about this author is that her writing is impeccable. She has a very distinct style that you can see from page one of anything you might pick up by her. I never read anything quite like hers and I am really intrigued to read more since I have only read two of her most famous novels.

I read this for the horror prompt in the 2023 genre bingo.

i'm like the stock character in a kids' show where his whole gimmick is coming up with elaborate get rich quick schemes that get him into scrapes and hijinks &c. &c. except all my elaborate schemes are just me thinking of different sorts of writing i can shill on my patreon for like £1 a month

The Six Deaths of The Saint by Alix E. Harrow

If I was asked "Is it worth it?" I would definitely say yes. 5 out of 5 stars.

It is a really short story (like really) I'm talking about less than 30 pages. But despite being that short, It absolutely told the story.

I don't want to give in details since it is an absolutely short read and want other people to discover the contents themselves for the full reading experience but let me tell you this. It is gut-wrenching. I've provided inspiration pics based on my perspective about the book. I am at loss for words to say how this 30-paged story took my heart (and it still has it).

I definitely recommend this book and would love to have discussions about it.

I wish all of you a wonderful reading experience on this book

11:11pm // March 25,2024

~ Elizabeth

In Rebecca Hirsch Garcia's debut collection, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories, characters deal with harsh disturbances and deal with magical realist twists and turns. A woman saves a life and gains a stalker, a woman turns into vapor, a husband becomes a wolf. A girl finds her door busted in and reports a theft only to realize they took nothing—which is somehow worse than if they'd robbed her. Teens deal with grief and harsh bullying.

Some of the stories I felt were overly grim, searching for darkness in order to shock. "Damage Control," for example, in which a teen with an eating disorder is confronted by a girl with a nasty scar down her face, both of them depicted as intensely self-hating. Or "Girl on the Metro," where a bystander is guilted into helping a drunk girl get home, only to hand her off to a stranger who may or may not have actually been the girl's boyfriend. In these tales, too often the core of the story rested in its ability to make the reader cringe, seemingly without any depth to it.

Other stories are more successful. In "The Coldest Place on Earth," a man obsesses over taking a trip to the coldest place on earth, as his marriage fails around him because he can't move past the trauma of a miscarriage, while his wife (it seems to him) already has. In "An Occupation," a woman comes home to find the door to her apartment has been forced—but whoever did it didn't take anything, which somehow makes the lasting disturbance much worse. And in "Woman Into Cloud," a woman and mother who often feels trapped in her body suddenly becomes a cloud of vapor, light, and free. The stories hit a groove of disturbance and disorientation that really worked for me. While I didn't love all the stories in the collection, I'll be keeping an eye out for what Garcia does in the future.

Content warnings for disordered eating, fatphobia, ableism, miscarriage, stalking, suicidal ideation, implied sexual assault.