canadian science fiction and fantasy

Imaginarium 4: Table of Contents revealed

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10982867_10153036781103855_735786566531418969_oVery honoured to be chosen to work with Sandra Kasturi of ChiZine Publications as a guest co-editor for Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing which features, yes, as advertised, the best speculative writing of Canadians from 2014.  This will be published in September, I think.  Follow the link above to see the Table of Contents.

Believe me, there were more amazing stories and poems than we could have possibly picked for one volume. These were hard choices, some of them, frankly, excruciating–but a 600 page volume was something that ChiZine said wasn’t possible for us at this time.

Congratulations to all who were chosen for this volume.  There is a significant list of Honourable Mentions that you’ll see in the book.

Damn, but Canadians are writing well.  That’s all I can say.

So happy too to have Margaret Atwood writing the Introduction to this collection.

For the Table of Contents please follow this link:

Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing

“One Nation Under Gods” finds home in Tesseracts 14

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My story, “One Nation Under Gods,” was selected to be part of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology, Tesseracts 14, edited by Brett Savory and John Robert Colombo, due out in September 2010.  The Tesseracts series is devoted to Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror, and has had, as you might have guessed, 14 other volumes (a Tesseracts Q was for Quebec, and the requisite 1-13 which came before). 

You might have caught me reading a portion of this at the Yukon Writers Festival a couple of years back.  It involves two kids and a history test, and a complete restructuring of the United States based on values Americans, like me, hold sacred: patriotism, freedom, the just war, independence, religion.  I just personified them a bit.  I’m very pleased it found a home.  I’m now going to start work on the novel version of this story.  

The picture on the left is the construction of the Statue of Liberty, a figure which looms large on the landscape at the beginning of my story.  And as I was now an immigrant to Canada, the Statue of Liberty loomed large on my new immigrant’s mind…what a dramatic beginning to a new life for those coming to America.  For me, I saw her on my way out.  On my drive from Texas to the Yukon, I parked my red truck in Calgary for one month, flew to Vermont to be part of a writer’s colony, and in that time, snuck down to see her.  Like some mistress I was breaking up with.  

How do you explain to her that you are leaving?   

I put her in my story, though, and so in this way, she haunts me.