Category: fiction

Jet-Propelled dieselpunk story in Oil

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My action-thriller dieselpunk piece “Deadstick” is the lead story in the Oil anthology from Static Movement, available now at Amazon. Would you risk your career and a pricey prototype aircraft for a slim chance to rescue someone? Here are the opening paragraphs:
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Hank pushed Sally-Jean over the crest and slammed on the afterburners. He’d logged more hours strapped into her snug cockpit than in the rest of the test planes put together. The snub-nosed Lockheed felt like she was a part of him. Some of the guys at Ridgecrest were starting to make lewd comments, asking when the wedding was.
He didn’t mind. What they didn’t know was the sheer bliss of pointing her heavy ass at the ground and shunting her into the stratosphere at six-gees, then bending her around, butterfly-like, into a parabolic arc, cutting the engine and letting her float fifty thousand feet down before re-igniting and pulling up, all sense of butterfly gone, screaming along fifty feet above the desert floor. He didn’t need the amphetamines they sometimes offered around, Sally-Jean kept him alert and hopped-up all he needed. She always came back with an empty tank.

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My thanks to editor Marty Zeigler for taking the story – and for working with me on finding a great title.

Two New Anthologies I’m editing

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As well as Dieselpunk, I’m editing two more anthologies for Static Movement.

Hospital is an anthology about scary hospitals. Think crazed doctors, abandoned asylums, body parts coming to life and so on. This is meant as a horror anthology, but I will look at other speculative genres (and even a literary story or two)

A Butterfly in China: stories of the butterfly effect. This is an anthology about where a tiny change can have a huge impact on an outcome – think about the time you missed that bus by just a moment, went to a diner to wait for the next bus, spilled your coffee and met the love of your life… or something like that. Or, perhaps, how some incremental shift causes disaster. This is a speculative fiction anthology – horror, sci-fi, fantasy and so on. Time travel is popular for this concept, and that’s fine, but I’m keen to see stories that go in other directions too.

As with other Static Movement anthologies, these are non-paying. Click on the titles for full submission details.

Infinite Windows on hiatus

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

Infinite Windows is on Indefinite Hiatus. Infinite Windows was the publisher of my serialized novel The Rotated. The serialization hasn’t finished yet: it’s only about a third of the way through. This means that I’ll be looking for a new publisher.

Infinite Windows has been a cool site, though not without some glitches and problems over the years. What I enjoyed about the publication was the longer stories that Dan took on – especially, of course, some of my own – so that as well a flash fiction, there were some more immersive stories published on the site.

It was at Dan’s encouragement that I pursued The Rotated as a novel. He published the original flash fiction version of The Rotated in June of 2009, but then asked me what else was there to the story, to the concept and suggesting (quite rightly as it turned out) that it felt like there could well be a novel.

So I set to and wrote the novel. It grew and changed, remaining aligned to the original story, but naturally different in scope and development. Initially, as I drafted the novel, I thought that the flash fiction story would play out as a scene within. It didn’t work out that way, but the scene is still a microcosm of several chapters, and perhaps is a sense of how things might have gone differently.

I feel a little sad at the hiatus, which could well be an end, but pleased with my stories, and the novel, that appeared on the site. I’m working on a query letter – which is proving harder than writing the novel itself – to send to agents as I try to find a new publisher for The Rotated.

Shells Walter interviews me for Walter Rhein

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 4 Comments

The wonderful Shells Walter has interviewed me here on Walter Rhein’s website.

Reading over the interview on the site, I seem to go on a bit – I’m sure the responses didn’t feel like that. Hope it doesn’t all sound like waffle.

Thanks Shells, I appreciate it. Shells is the author of the horror novel Dead Practices, and numerous other works. Walter is the author of The Bone Sword and other heroic fantasy novels.

Oh, She’s a Witch in Static Poetry

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My poem “Oh, She’s a Witch” is in the first poetry anthology from Static Movement. It was my first publication for this year, I’d just been waiting for it to appear on the Amazon page.

Nice little book, with a great range of poetry in it, lots of familiar names (well, from the Static Movement stable), and lots of new.

I’ll have another poem – “Devil with Angel Wings” – in the next anthology, Static Poetry II, as well.

Bathroom Break – flash fiction in PowderBurn Flash

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My second publication for the year – Bathroom Break – is now up at PowderBurnFlash.

Feeling a little bored with having seen yet another movie where the kidnapper lets the victim go to the bathroom and she escapes through the window, I wondered if there was a way to write around that cliche and still have a satisfying, entertaining story, without that “groan” factor. I hope I’ve succeeded. Let me know what you think.

Dieselpunk – print anthology – call for submissions

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’m editing an anthology of Dieselpunk for Static Movement. See the Dieselpunk thread on the Static Movement boards for full submission guidelines. Steampunk’s bastard cousin, Dieselpunk looks for speculative fiction filled with rugged, chunky engines but no sign of electronics. What would the would be like if we still had those huge 1950s aircraft, locos and cars, but no computers?

This is a non-paying anthology – for the love only.

The best of 2010

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

December 31st, 2010

I’ve published a lot of stories this year, as you can see from my bibliography. They’re all, for one reason or another, personal favourites, though some I might have thought a little less of have proven more engaging for some readers. I’ve tried a variety of styles and genres this year, from hard sci-fi to humourous horror and been published both in print and online.

Anyway, this selection is my favourite five online stories from the year:

Fledgling (The New Flesh)

Sunset Photographer (365Tomorrows)

Jacob’s Naked Aquarium (Bewildering Stories – selected for best of quarterly review, 3rd quarter 2010)

Zemogorgon (Pulp Metal Magazine)

Zombie-Eyed Girl (Flashes in The Dark)

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Overall, it’s been a good year, a banner year in fact – I’ve published more this year than all previous years combined – exceeding my own ridiculous goal (lesson: aim high). I still have so much more to work on and a set of new goals that will push me and challenge me – I will publish far fewer pieces, but look for longer stories, and different approaches.

See you in 2011.

Fibonacci poems to end the year

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

The Fibonacci Review publishes regular issues of Fibonacci poetry. The site explains it better than I can, but the poems – Fibs – are based on the Fibonacci sequence – lines with increasing numbers of syllables: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and variations of that.

Three of my poems appear in the December issue – French Nocture and, together, Bar, and Musicpoemusic. Fibs are fun, if challenging to write – check out some of the other poems in the issue to, some of these poets are way cleverer with the form than I am.