All the Short Stories That I Published in 2022

I've never had a year like 2022. This is the year I won a Locus Award, got an agent, and sold my debut novel. It's a year where I broke into so many magazines that were but distant dreams to me a few years ago. I've connected with more readers than ever, and every message from them has brightened my days and nights.

As a reflection on the year that was, I'm doing a round-up of every short story of mine that saw print. We'll start with the originals, and then collect the reprints. There's something for everyone here, from plucky kids who dream of learning magic they can't afford, to friendly wagers over time travel, to tyrants who control the world through psychic popularity, to the last man in a cold solar system building something nobody dreamed possible.

Thanks to the editors, most of these stories are free to read. A few even have free podcast audiobook editions. Please, enjoy a fiction or two!

If you have a favorite of these, which was it? I'm terribly curious.


ORIGINAL STORIES FROM 2022
 

FREE: “D.I.Y.” at Tordotcom. (~4,800 words)

Noah Byrne was a disabled boy who only ever wanted to go to wizarding school—but they turned him down when his medical debt meant he couldn’t afford it. Ever since then he’s stewed on the powers that control magic in his world, and how little they’re doing to address the drought in his home city. Together with an unlikely ally, Noah hatches a plan to change accessibility for learning magic not just for himself, but for everyone.

FREE: “Demonic Invasion or Placebo Effect?” at Sunday Morning Transport. (~2,900 words)

Demons are tired of being called a superstition. A pair of demonic academics use a small town in the U.S. as their laboratory to prove human imaginations don’t create demons, and that human faith has no effect on them. Unfortunately, some of their test results might just have started haunting their lab.

FREE: “The Coward Who Stole God’s Name” in Uncanny Magazine. (~4,400 words)

Sometimes popularity is its own superpower. Gavin Davenport is the most beloved man on Earth—even though not a soul can explain why they care about him. He invites a journalist to his private compound, to share the dark secret behind his fame. He wants to be exposed. But what will happen when the world learns the secret? What will happen to the journalist who tells the truth nobody wants to hear?

FREE: “The Ones Who Can’t Let It Go” in Nature Futures. (~900 words)

A comedy flash set so far in the future I had to write it in future tense. There’s only one guy left in this particular solar system, and no matter how much his daughter begs him to leave, he is set on his goal. He’s got a project that requires gathering all the loose matter in the galaxy. What is his master plan? You’ll have to read it to find out, but I can’t believe Nature let me get away with it.

ON SALE: “The True Meaning of Father’s Day” at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. (~900 words)

The story began as a dare: could I write a story that was entirely an argument between friends trying to pay the lunch check? But there’s a twist: the friends are all time travelers. Each devious friend has tried to sneak farther back in time than the next in order to get the check first. They might have hit a paradox before dessert.

ON SALE: “The Great Beyond Commands” in Unidentified Funny Objects 9. (~1,000 words)

A story told entirely through magical brainwashing spells. This mild-mannered academic wizard keeps getting accosted by the same assassin. He keeps casting spells to make the assassin forget him and go away, but somehow the assassin keeps coming back—each time, in even tighter pants. Experience the romcom of a wizard who just wants to be left alone, and the distressingly hot rogue who somehow keeps breaking magic spells to visit him again.

FREE: “Too Little, Too Little, Too Much” in Cossmass Infinities. (~3,200 words)

Lark is a little boy who keeps setting fires with his mind. He can’t help it; they spark up whenever he’s upset. But Lark can’t tell anyone why he lives every day in fear, because Father demands secrecy behind closed doors. This story is as dark as my fiction has ever gotten, and is about how children pass child abuse between each other, and the desperate hope it can be stopped before their world burns.

 

STORIES REPRINTED IN 2022

FREE: "Open House on Haunted Hill" in LeVar Burton Reads

FREE: "The Tyrant Lizard (and Her Plus One)" AND "Alien Invader or Assistive Device?" in the same episode of Escape Pod

FREE: "The Tentacle and You" in Pseudopod

FOR SALE: "For Lack of a Bed" in The Hugo Long List Anthology 8

 

Happy reading and happy new years, everyone!