You may have heard that the Curiosity has landed on Mars. It is doing science and taking beautiful pictures for us. Pour one out for our intrepid rover, won’t you?

In a strangely topical turn of events, a piece of microfiction I’ve been sending out called “Mars” has just been selected for publication by NANO Fiction. This will be my first print publication. I’m looking forward to seeing bits of paper with my words on them.

“Mars”, as you might expect, is about Mars. It is also about other things. I’ll post a proper process post about it when it shows up in NANO. It is short, and easily spoiled if I talk too much about it.

I’ve spent much of the past year fretting about my textual voice. I often feel like my writing occupies an odd badlands. Too wordy for the genre publications, too weird for the lit journals. (Which may be why I like working for Unstuck  so much.) I’ve been pushing myself back and forth across the lines recently, trying to write literary realism and science fictional adventure yarns. Ultimately, though, the stories that get picked up are the ones that come straight from those liminal badlands. I write quiet fictions about unquiet things. I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon.