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In the March issue of Fantasy Magazine . . .
Short stories by Isabel J. Kim (“Christopher Mills, Return to Sender”) and Gabrielle Harbowey (“The Dybbuk Ward”); flash fiction by Marie H. Lewis (“I Have Reached into the Basket”) and Lisa M. Bradley (“Collecting Ynes”); poetry by Alex Jennings (“Negative Detection”) and Cislyn Smith (“Stilling”); and Arley interviews author Rebecca Roanhorse.
Cover art by Анна Богатырева / Adobe Stock Image
In this issue’s short fiction, Isabel J. Kim gives us a necromancer out for justice for her murdered brother in “Christopher Mills, Return to Sender,” and Gabrielle Harbowy takes us inside “The Dybbuk Ward”; in flash fiction, Marie H. Lewis re-examines Persephone’s fate in “I Have Reached Into The Quantum Basket,” and Lisa M. Bradley’s “Collecting Ynes” is a mythologized account of Ynes Mexia, a Mexican-American woman who experienced mental illness, and who eventually became a world-renowned botanist – without a degree; for poetry, we have “Negative Detection” by Alex Jennings and “Stilling” by Cislyn Smith. Plus an interview with award-winning author of the Sixth World series, Race to the Sun, Black Sun and Fevered Star, and much more, Rebecca Roanhorse. Enjoy!
I HAVE REACHED INTO THE (Quantum) BASKET, SEEN THE THINGS SHOWN, HEARD THE THINGS SAID, KNOWN THE THINGS DONE. (Declaration of Initiates)
In this issue’s short fiction, Isabel J. Kim gives us a necromancer out for justice for her murdered brother in “Christopher Mills, Return to Sender,” and Gabrielle Harbowy takes us inside “The Dybbuk Ward”; in flash fiction, Marie H. Lewis re-examines Persephone’s fate in “I Have Reached Into The Quantum Basket,” and Lisa M. Bradley’s “Collecting Ynes” is a mythologized account of Ynes Mexia, a Mexican-American woman who experienced mental illness, and who eventually became a world-renowned botanist – without a degree; for poetry, we have “Negative Detection” by Alex Jennings and “Stilling” by Cislyn Smith. Plus an interview with award-winning author of the Sixth World series, Race to the Sun, Black Sun and Fevered Star, and much more, Rebecca Roanhorse. Enjoy!
Some days I wake too early / Eyes like hardboiled eggs / All of me borrowed / Blood beating in my ears / Limbs arranged in a / Semaphore of loneliness.
I think in a world where death is just a state change, we would absolutely turn the dead into one of the cogs in the machinery of capitalism, a resource to be utilized by the living, and this story takes that idea to that logical conclusion. I was inspired by the classic idea of “necromancer resurrects skeletons/zombies to do their bidding”—great, now what if it’s just the whole guy you grab, and everything that the guy knows?
Ynes doesn’t remember the marigold, but she has a recurring dream in which she accidentally swallows an entire tangerine. She grows very warm and realizes it was not a tangerine at all but a small sun. She knows if she tells her mother what she swallowed, there will be a panic. So instead, she keeps her mouth shut. The sun sits warm in her belly and shines tendrils of light down her arms and legs. When rays escape her fingertips, she puts on mittens.
Her grandchildren are little greygreen screefalls of tumbling action / tumbling up over her shoulders in the moonlight / just to fling themselves down her incline, down the long hill
Creativity is fragile. You can’t let many voices in because there’s always plenty of people who want to tear you down, not realizing your harshest critic is yourself. Or at least it is for me. So while I do sometimes read early reviews, I tend not to read anything about my work after it’s been released. It’s already gone through editors and a critique group and many, many drafts. And no work will ever be perfect or please everyone. It can only capture a moment in time for the author – who they were and what concerned then when they wrote it – and then we move on to what’s next.
Maladies we used to blame on spirits or an imbalance of humors are now known to be due to germs, or genetic factors, or organ dysfunction. Mental illnesses and drastic personality changes that used to be called possession are now discussed in terms of functional brain connectivity. But there are cultures that still believe in those older, less scientific explanations, and what if they’re not wrong?
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